Economics

• Gender inequality limits women's access to social, economic, and political opportunities, affecting health, education, and income.
• Geography and landlocked countries face disadvantages in terms of transportation costs and dependence on neighboring countries for export and import activities.
• Secure property rights and land rights are crucial for economic growth and investment.
• Weak institutional frameworks, including property rights, legal systems, tax systems, and banking institutions, can hinder economic development.
• Tropical climates play a significant role in determining agricultural production, animal husbandry, and labor productivity.
• Access to banking services and credit is important for economic growth and poverty alleviation.
• Corruption, the abuse of public office for private gain, undermines trust in the state, misallocates resources, and restricts competition.
• Unequal political power and status can hinder development efforts.
• Increased income inequality leads to lower private investment as uncertainty increases.
• Inequities in tax systems, such as high dependence on indirect taxation and low property tax rates, can contribute to corruption and favor the wealthy.
• Better governance, including participation, fairness, accountability, transparency, and efficiency, is associated with more investment and economic growth.
• Lower private investment can lead to a debt trap, where countries borrow to pay off existing debt.
• Disadvantages of market-based policies: Difficulty in designing appropriate taxes or permits, potential impact on consumers, and political favoritism.
• Marginal private cost (MPC): Costs to producers of producing one more unit of a good.
• Excludable: Possible to exclude people by using the good or charging a price.
• Carbon taxes: Tax per unit of carbon emissions of fossil fuels to encourage firms to switch to less polluting resources.
• Conditional assistance (lending) by the World Bank deprives countries of control
• Marginal social benefits (MSB): Benefits to society from consuming one more unit of a good.
• Excessive interference in countries' domestic affairs is a criticism of the World Bank
• Welfare loss: Reduction in social benefits due to misallocation of resources.
• Reducing corruption involves transparency, independent external scrutiny, tax administration reform, professional civil service, cooperation with other countries, and establishing mechanisms and incentives to discourage corruption
• Collective self-governance: Approach to manage resources undertaken by communities of resource users collectively.
• Microfinance refers to small loans provided to people who do not have access to credit, delivered by microfinance institutions such as credit unions and NGOs
• Tradable permits: Permits to pollute issued to firms that can be bought and sold, providing incentives to switch to less polluting resources.
• Government intervention limitations include inefficiency, bureaucracy, and potential for corruption
• Positive externality: Benefits to third parties.
• Market-oriented policies encourage competition, labor reforms, and market-based supply-side policies
• Advantages of government legislation and regulation: Simple to implement and oversee, easier to implement compared to market-based policies, and quite effective.
• World Bank governance is dominated by rich countries, giving them voting power based on financial contribution
• Rivalrous: Consumption by one person reduces availability for someone else.
• World Bank: Social and environmental concerns are evaluated to ensure project objectives align with SDGs
• Renewable resource: Resources that can last indefinitely if they are managed properly.
• Property and land rights contribute to food security, lower deforestation rates, preserve food cultures and biodiversity, support indigenous peoples, and contribute to gender equality and poverty reduction
• Production externality: Results from production activities.
• Microfinance has a positive impact on poverty reduction but only reaches a small proportion of the poor
• Indirect (Pigouvian) taxes: Imposing a tax equal to the external cost to incentivize firms to reduce negative externalities.
• Externalities: Occurs when the actions of consumers or producers give rise to negative or positive side-effects on third parties.
• International Monetary Fund (IMF): A multilateral financial institution that lends to countries with balance of payments deficits
• Non-renewable resources: Resources that do not last indefinitely as they have a finite supply.
• Market-oriented policies limitations include inequality, externalities, and potential for market failures