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| NADEL Newsletter |
Dear NADEL Friends and Alumni
The upcoming holiday season will hopefully offer a few relaxing hours for everybody. An opportunity to read on topics that are still pertinent on the eve of the New Year 2022.
For the end of the year, we have put together a selection of 12 of our writings published in 2021 – one for each month of the year – blogs, policy briefs, scientific articles and books on topics including poverty, resource governance, COVID-19 and development cooperation.
Let us know if you have any questions or comments on any of the writings. We would be delighted to discuss them with you.
We wish you an inspiring read – and new ideas for 2022!
Fritz Brugger, Isabel Günther and the NADEL team |
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| Brief: Evidence in development policymaking and practice |
| The aim of international development is to improve lives around the world, but how do decision-makers know which projects work and which do not? In two policy briefs, Kimon Schneider outlines an approach to help decision-makers assess evidence quality (paper 1) and identifies a set of institutional measures that facilitate evidence use (paper 2). |
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| Book: Foreign policy for Switzerland in the 21st Century |
| Isabel Günther and Fritz Brugger co-authored the chapter on international cooperation in this book on the history and future of Swiss foreign policy. How have events like the fall of the Berlin wall, 9/11, the financial crises or migration flows shaped development cooperation - and what needs to change moving towards 2030? (in German) |
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| Brief: How to ramp up MDB capacity after the Covid crisis |
| Where should the billions come from to build back from the Covid crisis? Given the limitations of development finance and the mobilization of private money, Chris Humphrey proposes that the World Bank and other major development banks innovate to boost lending capacity by introducing a new, non-voting share class for institutional investors. |
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| Brief: Too many schemes and not enough demand for certified gold |
| Whether as a Christmas gift or as an investment, gold is in demand. At the same time, the conventional gold market has to deal with a variety of problems such as child labour, dangerous working conditions and environmental pollution. Certified gold is an alternative that most consumers are not yet aware of, as Antoinette van der Merwe highlights in her policy brief. |
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| Blog: Why is demand for fair trade chocolate still low? |
| Cocoa farmers often receive less than 5% of the price we pay for chocolate. Chocolate that guarantees farmers a minimum price is a first small step toward better working conditions. However, meagre demand cancels out the positive effect: only 10% of chocolate consumed in Switzerland is Fairtrade, even though the country is the world leader in Fairtrade consumption. Isabel Günther discusses the reasons. |
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| Article: Do investments by mining companies harm citizen-state relations? |
| More and more companies finance basic infrastructure for communities as part of their CSR activities, taking over governments‘ responsibilities. Do these private investments undermine citizen-state relations, ask Selina Bezzola and co-authors. Some initial evidence, using a field experiment in mining areas in Burkina Faso to understand how private vs public investment influences state-citizen relations, suggests not. |
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| Book: Transitioning to no poverty |
| Is SDG 1 feasible at all? This book, edited by Rahul Lahoti and Isabel Günther, offers perspectives from 17 authors on the feasibility of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Authors consider the current status of the progress toward the goal, the role of essential policies to leave no one behind and ways to mobilize the needed substantive resources to invest in poverty reduction policies. |
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| Book: Einführung in die Entwicklungsökonomik |
| Interested in using basic economics to think about why some countries are poor and others are not? The eight chapters of this introductory book by Kenneth Harttgen, Isabel Günther and Katharina Michaelowa cover poverty and inequality, economic growth, governance, fiscal and social policies, health and education, environment and climate, globalization, trade and migration and international development cooperation. No prior economic knowledge is necessary. (in German) |
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| Blog: Why the Covid certificate requirement is not discriminatory |
| Claims that measures to combat the Coronavirus are discriminatory blur the very concept of discrimination. To be discriminatory, unequal treatment must lack objective justification – such as putting people at a disadvantage based on their belonging to a particular social group. Important reflections by Dario Meili as the debate on mandatory vaccination becomes more intense. |
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| Article: Pandemic and informality: impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in India |
| Decades-long high economic growth failed to translate into more secure livelihoods for a vast majority of the workforce. A large-scale survey conducted by Rahul Lahoti across 12 states in India during the lockdown in 2020 revealed the impact of informality and low levels of social security: two-thirds of respondents lost employment, 80% of households had to reduce food intake and half took out a loan to cover expenses. |
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