Download Developing Nations and the Agricultural Sector

IF275B: Economic Development Strategies
Research Paper Proposals
1) David Lauer:
Examine sustainable development as it relates to China’s recent economic development.
An application and analysis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve and any evidence for or
against it as far as Chinese development is concerned, along with possible future issues
and problems. Finally, any policy recommendations that may be suggested by this
analysis.
2) Ivan Gontchar:
The subject of development has many dimensions one of which (sometimes considered
essential by policymakers) is economic development. Among large number of factors and
policies that determine successful economic development of any country especially in
modern globalized word with increasing number of interconnections and interdependence
between countries, I would like to single out and make the subject of my term paper the
problem of choice and appropriate management of foreign exchange regimes by some
developing countries. More specifically, I intend to look at foreign exchange
management of Eastern Europeans countries, so called transitional economies, through
the prism of the events of the last decade in global financial markets as well as taking into
account current and future goals set by respective governments.
Several important factors make this topic interesting for a research:
- specified above countries faced very unusual economic conditions and thus
unordinary problem related to transformation from command to market based
economic environment. It is interesting to determine whether there exist an
optimal foreign exchange regime for this kind of transition;
- these countries managed to escape virtually unscathed a wave of financial crises
of late 90’s. How their foreign exchange policies help to maintain stability and
were there any changes implemented based on experience learned from those
financial cataclysms;
- most of the countries of the Eastern Europe are aspiring candidates to join the
process of European economic integration. How thy structure their foreign
exchange policies in order to facilitate future integration into SMU (Single
Monetary Union);
- what is the place of foreign exchange regimes in overall developmental policies of
these countries and can their experience be used by policymakers elsewhere in the
world.
3) Alexander Dyson:
Topic: The effect of capital controls on a developing economy
Question:
1. What effect does the open flow of capital have on a small developing economy?
2. What problems does this volatility cause?
3. What solutions could fix these problems?
4. How do these issues fit into overall worldwide opinion on liberalization of
markets?
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Why:
1.
2.
3.
4.
How to manage their foreign exchange is an issue every country must face.
Volatility in currency markets can cause an economy to collapse.
Much of trade in currencies is speculative, not productive.
Though it goes against the prevailing notion of free markets, currency controls
can stabilize an economy.
5. Currency flows determine exchange rates, which can have huge impacts on the
trade activities of developing nations.
6. Many developing nations don’t have the foreign reserves to stabilize their
currency on their own.
How:
1. A survey of the current literature
2. An examination of the case for and against capital controls, and a look at different
options for how to implement.
3. A quantitative look at historical examples of currency collapse, and in general at
patterns of currency flows.
4) Tony Deary:
Does increased development in Brazil affect domestic child labor/slavery issues,? And
if so, how to combat the problem?
I am asking this question because I will be spending my semester abroad in Brazil, and I
hope to observe both the good side and the ugly side of Brazil while I’m there. I think it
is important as a westerner to understand some of the implications globalization is having
on things like child labor, (Especially as it is so uncommon in the developed world) not
just increased per capita GDP and more telephones per 100 people. I am not a pessimist,
I just want to uncover some of the darker side of Brazil for my own awareness, and
present some kind of policy suggestions to combat it.
-I will first identify the current situation and how and why it arose, discuss current
policies (if any) to deal with the problem, and how effective they are.
-I wish to also find if there is a specific correlation between development and incidence
of child labor. To do this I will run a simple regression (using child labor numbers from
UNICEF, per capita GDP, and illiteracy rate). I will report and interpret the findings and
determine if there is causality with development.
-and then suggest alternative solutions; If indeed globalization has increased the
incidence of child labor in Brazil, then I will suggest that some of the burden of tackling
this problem may lie with countries engaged in investing in Brazil.
I will also suggest to implement policies which we have here in the west to mitigate child
labor in the wake of development. After all, part of development is educating and
supporting the youth of society, for they will be the leaders of the country in the coming
generations.
I have already found a wide source of information on child labor, and development
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(I had originally wanted to use migration to the cities, but there isn’t enough info out
there).
5) Roberta Barone:
How did Charlotte's children project work?
Charlotte's children association is located in Montego Bay, in Jamaica.
Charlotte is a Jamaican woman married to a man from Milan, and since she was in a
better situation than her conational, decided to give them a hand through the institution of
a small association that takes care of about 12 underprivileged children. My paper wants
to explore the difficulties that this project has to face, through an overview of Jamaica's
socioeconomic situation.
6) Armando Avallone:
-What?
Working title: ”Could the money spent in Nicaragua in the last decade for
environmental projects have been spent to finance other kind of projects?”
(I know it’s the worst title ever)
-Why?
I choose Nicaragua because it is a nation I am interested in and I already know something
having read the poverty reduction paper.
Moreover I think that the topic is quite interesting and feasible. I also think that it can be
developed well with the tools your course provided us.
-How?
I think I will provide a description of the major projects related to the environment
undertaken in the last 10 years.
Then I will analyze some project (of about the same economic size) not related to the
environment that where proposed but not undertaken.
I will conclude answering the question.
About the projects I was thinking about taking under consideration mainly the World
Bank projects (data and description are quite easily available). Up to now I could not find
a lot about not undertaken projects, but I think I will be able to ask information about
them to professor Leipziger ( whose class “international institutions” I am taking).
If this idea doesn’t fit I was thinking about another project that could look like “Is Sicily
(artificially considered a sovereign nation) a developed country?”
Basically the work would be evaluating Sicilian social and economic indicators,
comparing them with the ones of developed and developing countries and finally draw a
conclusion.
I think this research should be very interesting (answering questions like “can a rich
country like Italy help developing one of his underdeveloped regions” and then “why?”
or “why not” and in both cases “how?”).
Data can be found in the ISTAT site .I also think it would not be too difficult to find
World Bank opinions on the projects they have undertaken there.
The main problem with this topic is that it should be seen from both economic and
historical perspective, so it is not so related with the course.
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7) Ashwini Apte:
Developing Nations and the Agricultural Sector
Objectives:
 Examine Role of Agricultural Sector to a Developing Nation
 Examine Role of Agricultural Sector as Development occurs
 Specific Case Examples India and China
 Effects on the agricultural industry
Topic: I would like to look at how development and a shift from the agricultural sector to
the industrial sector has affected the agriculture industry in developing nations, by
focusing on the effect of development and agricultural policies in India and in China.
What are the policies? To what extent do they benefit development? To what extent do
they benefit the agricultural sector?
Why: I am tackling this question because it is important to understand the rold of the
agricultural sector in the development of a country. Usually under-developed countries
rely heavily on this sector. In order to move away from it, into more of an industrialized
setting, the policy reform has to have certain characteristics, I want to understand which
ones are important to successful development.
How: I plan on answering my question by means of outside resources as well as the IMF
and World Bank resources. By taking historical data, and policies into account and
seeing the end result, I plan on ranking the importance of certain factors into allowing for
an easier transition from agriculture to an industrialized setting. This will be done
through subsequent analysis of the resources below along with others I will find.
Articles:
1) Gulati, A. Indian Agriculture in a Gloabalizing World, American Journal of
Agricultural Economics, (August 2002), 754-61.
2) Kalirajan, K.P., & Sankar, U. Agriculture in India’s Economic Reform Program,
Journal of Asian Economics, (Fall 2001), 383-99.
3) Bhat, K.S., & Nirmala, V. Instability of Agricultural Exports and Economic
Growth in India, Indian Economic Journal, (Jan – March 2001), 87-91.
4) Storm, S. The Desirable Form of Openness for Indian Agriculture, Cambridge
Journal of Economics, (March 2001), 185-207.
5) Johnson, D. G. Can Agricultural Labor Adjustment Occur Primarily Through
Creation of Rural Non-farm Jobs in China?, Urban Studies, (November 2002),
2163-74.
6) de Brauw, A. The Evolution of China’s Rural Labor Markets during the Reforms,
Journal of Comparative Economics, (June 2002), 329-53.
7) Martin, W. Implications of Reform and WTO Accession for China’s Agricultural
Policies, Economics of Transition, (2001), 717-42.
8) Sun, Z. The Challenges that China Will Face with Regard to Its Agricultural
Policies after Joining the WTO, Chinese Economy, (Mar-Apr 2000), 54-66.
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8) Stella Biira Bwambale:
What Role has education played in the Uganda’s development?
The intention of this research is to find out if education plays any role in development
and if it does what role it has played in Uganda’s development.
In other words, I want to find out if it has had an impact on Uganda’s development.
Why this question?
Many times, education has been named as one of the key factors that contribute to
development. As a matter of fact, it has been given priority in some, if not most countries
and has also been recommended by many institutions, researchers and economists as one
of the policies that lead to development. This is why I have picked keen interest in
researching on this topic and find out how much it has done in Uganda.
How to answer it?
A lot of research has been carried out on education and related issues and this is going to
be a starting point for me. Also I intend to formulate some models, for which I will
collect data, analyze it and come up with the answer. The knowledge I have learnt in
class is also going to come in handy in this research with this I do look forward to finding
an answer to this.
9) Carolina Caviles:
The informal sector in Peru: A transitional sector as a new way of development?
The informal sector (IS) describes economic activity that takes place outside the formal
norms of economic transactions established by the state and formal business practices
but which is not clearly illegal in itself.1 In general, this term is applied to individual or
family-managed micro and small businesses.
The objective of the paper is to clearly define the role that the informal sector plays in the
dynamics of Peruvian economy as a mechanism people have developed to fight poverty
and lack of job opportunities. The framework of the analysis should be the need to fight
poverty and create jobs as a priority for the country. The paper will also start defining the
term informality that will be relevant for the analysis.
Clearly informality is the result of economic stagnation and underdevelopment that
affected Latin American countries, in particularly Peru in the 1990s. The issue to
investigate is whether the informal sector is an opportunity for development or is an
obstacle to do so because of the different problems that it encompass such as low tax
collections, poor institutions, etc.
Some data related to the impact of informality in the economic activity should be
presented; however, different problems for informal sector measurement exist. Even if
statistics are available for informal sector, the major problems are in terms of
Cross, John C. in Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Philip O’Hara Routledge, London & New York.
1998.
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differentiating agricultural activities from the informal sector and because most of the
surveys are conducted in major metropolitan areas or capital cities. The analysis of
certain variables that seem related to the informality problem will be presented, as for
example: growth rate in the period of 1990 to 2002 related to the growth of informality
sector; formal employment trend in the same period, among others.
“For countries in Latin America, informal employment has been growing since 1990
between 25 to 69.9 % of total employment. For Chile, the indicator remained almost
constant, while for Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela it continued to
increase during the whole decade. As for Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Peru the
informal sector already has a relatively greater importance for women's employment than
for men's.2”
Finally, the paper would try to respond the following question: How to turn the
transitional sector into a formal one? On doing so, the evaluation of the “cost of
formality” and the factors that prevent development of these activities such as
undercapitalization, lack of skills and lack of economies of scale, should be analyzed.
Special emphasis will be given to the main problems of financing and education.
References (so far):
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Estache Antonio, Accounting for poverty in infrastructure reform: Learning from
Latin America’s experience, WBI Development Studies. Washington, D.C.: World
Bank, 2002
http://www-ilmirror.cornell.edu/public/english/employment/skills/informal/fields.htm
http://www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/temas/worker/doc/
sind/xviii/
De Soto, Hernando (1986) The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third
World. New York, Harper & Row, 1989.
Portes, Alejandro, Castells, Manuel & Benton, Lauren A., (eds) (1989) The Informal
Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. Baltimore and
London, John Hopkins University Press.
Itzigsohn, Jose Development poverty: the state, labor market deregulation, and the
informal economy in Costa Rica and Dominican Republic, Pennsylvania State
University Press 2000.
Iftikhar Ahmed and Jacobus A. Doeleman Beyond Rio : the environmental crisis and
sustainable livelihoods in the Third World.
Based on The International Labor Organization’s Informal Sector Employment data.
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10) Charles Njogu:
WHAT ARE THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTES TO THE BREAKDOWN OF
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY?
A CASE STUDY OF EAST AFRICAN ECONOMY (EAC).
Objectives:
 To determine the factors that contributes to the formation and reformation of
EAC.
 To determine the factors that contributed to the breakup of EAC.
 To determine the factors that could contribute to the success of EAC.
 To recommend the best strategy to take.
Hypothesis
My assumption is that EAC has been braking up due to poverty. This will be measured
by GDP (capita per person). Some countries are better off in terms of resources than
others and hence sharing of resources become a problem.
Control Variables:
Growth rate
Education/literacy rate
Interest rate
Exchange rate
Resources
Exports
Imports
Health
political
WHAT?
The question that I wish to address is the cause(s) that lead to the breakup and
reformation of EAC. This topic is quite interesting because EAC has been breaking up
and to my surprise they keep on re uniting again.
WHY?
 The basic reason is to fulfill the requirement of the course.
 To broaden my knowledge and to help me understand Economic Communities.
 To gather information that I would organize and publish in form of an article.
 To recommend cause of action to be taken.
 To form a base for another research to be carried on.
HOW?
To be able to understand in depth, then I need to analyze historical data both qualitative
and quantities. Since EAC has broken up several times then they form a good measure
for both success and failure. I will be analyzing the issues related to the time of break up
or reformation as measure.
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