Ideas and Growth: Some interesting economists

Some economists, starting decades ago, have studied the benefits of technological change for economic growth. In recent years, with the increase in interest in "the knowledge society" and "the information society" some economists have updated studies to consider the impact of "ideas" on growth. I have identified a few of these economists below, with one or more publications for each (to illustrate the work that is being done).

Background

A standard economic growth model includes three factors: capital, labor and productivity. One can add another factor -- knowledge. Knowledge can be embodied in labor, in the form of a better educated and trained workforce. It can be embodied in capital, as in the form of robotics.

Ideas are nonrivsalous. One person having an idea does not restrict other people from having the idea. On the other hand, if you train a person to operate a machine, it is assumed that he can only operate one machine at a time. Thus it takes an investment to train a person, and the human capital so developed can be rivalous. (On the other hand, if you write a program for a robot to carry out a specific assembly, then presumably all other robots of the same design can use the same program to carry out the same assembly without other major investment.)

The stock of knowledge can be seen to depreciate. Thus knowledge that people once held may be lost (e.g. how to chip stone tools). Similarly, knowledge capital can lose its value: thus technology that once had value may lose its ability to generate income as the knowledge of how to manufacture buggy wips lost value with the introduction of the automobile.

What are our indicators?

* Expenditures on research and development: and we can assume that R&D increases the stock of a certain kind of knowledge.
* Funadmental Research: this is presumably R&D that increases the stock of ideas, and to publications, but does not lead directly to commercial processes and products.
* Applied Research and Development: this is presumably information that is likely to lead to commercial advantage, and thus to patents or trade secrets.
* Process Patents: these seem to be related to the knowledge available to be embodied in plant and equipment, and thus related to capital in the normal definition of the term;
* Product Patents: These are ideas for new products, and it is the patent protection that turns them into intellectual property, and thus a kind of capital good.
Scientific and Technological Publications: These form a stock of ideas in the public domain.

Some knowledge with significant value for economic growth, I suggest, is not produced by research and development funding. Technology deepening illustrates such knowledge. When workers on the factory floor improve their mastery of an acquired technology through practice and analysis of its operation, the investment is not captured in R&D accounts. Similarly, when firms are reorganized to improve productivity, or markets and industries are restructured for the same purpose, knowledge is surely involved but the investment is not captured in R&D accounts.

While much thought has gone into figuring out where knowledge appears in the production function, and how the different aspects of knowledge can be measured, I suggest that there is likely to remain a residual improvement in productivity that will be attributed to unmeasured knowledge inputs.

The Economists

I attended a seminar recently by Roberto Samaniego (of the Department of Economics at George Washington University) in which he described a model that sought to explain the effect of research and development expenditures on economic growth. The talk was based on his working paper, "R&D and Growth: The Missing Link?".

Abstract: The presumption that R&D is a key driver of economic growth is difficult to reconcile with the empirical evidence. For example, in most studies, which identify technical change with total factor productivity (TFP), the link between TFP and measures of knowledge is found to be weak.

This paper shows that a reconciliation may be possible in a model where R&D contributes to growth through investment-specific technical change. Such a model predicts that the empirical link between knowledge and productivity would be weak even when the generation of knowledge is the predominant factor of economic growth. The paper also shows that estimates of the production function for knowledge using patent data may be biased.

Charles I. Jones is at the Department of Economic of the University of California at Berkeley. Read his working paper, "The Value of Information in Growth and Development" (November 2005).

Abstract: This paper explores the role of information in the theory of economic growth and development. They way it is used here, ?information? refers to every feature of an economy, including not only the economic environment, but also the institutions like markets and government policies that affect the allocation of resources. The first half of the paper considers a model where consumers are faced with an enormous range of possible goods they can purchase, so many that they do not know exactly how much utility they would get from consuming each good. Improvements in this information possessed by consumers increases welfare by making the allocation of resources more efficient, and these effects may be large in some cases. The second half extends these ideas to the production side of the economy and argues that a model where different kinds of information are crucial to successful production can lead to an information-based theory of TFP. In the theory outlined here, large differences in incomes can be explained by small differences in the ease with which people in a given country can acquire four different kinds of complementary knowledge.

Jones' "Growth and Ideas" in the Handbook of Economic Growth (Chapter 10, September 2004) is especially interesting:

Abstract: Ideas are different from nearly all other economic goods in that they are nonrivalrous. This nonrivalry implies that production possibilities are likely to be characterized by increasing returns to scale, an insight that has profound implications for economic growth. The purpose of this chapter is to explore these implications.

Philippe Aghion at the Department of Economics at Harvard University and Peter Howitt of the Department of Economics at Brown University, and their paper "Appropriate Growth Policy: A Unifying Framework" (August, 2005):

From the Introduction: In this Schumpeter lecture, we shall argue that growth theory is in fact useful to think about growth policy, provided one uses the adequate growth paradigm. We posit that Schumpeterian theory in which growth results from quality-improving innovations, provides such a paradigm and can be developed into a theory of the policy of growth. Unlike the other endogenous growth models, namely the AK model and Romer’s product variety model, the Schumpeterian paradigm provides a way to “systematize” the case-bycase approach advocated by Rodrik, by pointing at key economic variables such as the country’s distance to the technological frontier or its degree of financial development, that should affect the design of structural and macroeconomic policies aimed at fostering growth.

The lecture is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the three main endogenous growth paradigms: AK, the Schumpeterian framework, and the product variety model. The next sections discusses three areas in which good policy can make a difference for growth, and in particular help overcome current European stagnation. Section 3 focuses on competition and entry, and in particular explains why Europe would benefit from a competition and labor market policy that does not only emphasize competition among incumbent firms, but also stresses the importance of entry, exit and mobility. Section 4 analyzes education, and argues that growth in Europe would benefit from devoting more resources to higher education. Section 5 discusses the role and design of countercyclical budgetary policies. Finally Section 6 concludes the lecture by revisiting the role of savings in the growth process, in a way that questions the neo-classical and AK models at their very heart and also suggests new policy avenues.

Danny Quah at the Department of Economics of the London School of Economics, and his paper "Fostering innovation for productivity – the challenges for managing intellectual property":

Excerpt: The commodity on which the world is running excess supply? Knowledge.

Today, just as the world's knowledge stock is climbing ever higher peaks, the fraction of knowledge being used productively is plumbing ever lower depths. Since knowledge can't be added up the same way that, say, apples and bananas can, we can only tell if knowledge is under-used by comparing its social benefits with its social costs. If, at the margin, benefits exceed costs then productive usage is too low - life would be sweeter on net were society to deploy more of that particular item of knowledge; we would say knowledge is under-used.

Check out his website on "The Weightless Economy".

The MacBride Commission and its Findings

A major reason that the United States withdrew from UNESCO in the 1980's was the anger generated by UNESCO's discussions of a New World Information and Communications Order.

A major contribution to that discussion was a UNESCO publication, "Many Voices, One World". This was the report of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. The Commission is ofter known as the MacBride Commission, after its chair, Sean MacBride.

As a result of the report, UNESCO is described by Sourcewatch as having launched the International Program for the Development of Communication. (The United States is now a donor to this program.) The Program web site states that it "exists to strengthen the means of mass communication in developing countries, by increasing technical and human resources for the media, by developing community media and by modernising news agencies and broadcasting organizations."

MacBride was an interesting character (see a brief bio). An Irish statesman, he was born in Paris, and his father was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising. His mother was Maud Gonne MacBride, a beauty and one of the strongest advocates of Irish Nationalism. Together with William Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne helped establish the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. (Yeats fell in love with her and his feelings for her inspired a large number of poems. In 1902 Gonne played the leading role in his play, Kathleen Ni Houlihan.)

McBride was Irish Minister for External Affairs when the Council of Europe was drafting the European Convention on Human Rights and is credited with being a key force in securing the acceptance of this convention. He was President of the International Board of Amnesty International for 14 years, and Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists for seven. He was also elected Chair (1968-1974) and later President(1974-1985) of the International Peace Bureau. In 1973 he was elected by the General Assembly of the United Nations to the post of UN Commissioner for Namibia with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his life's work in 1974. He died in 1988.

The MacBride principles, named after Sean McBride, were adopted as US law in 1998 creating a fair employment code for U.S. companies in Northern Ireland, and contributing to the peace in Ireland.

The MacBride Round Table on Communication is a communications rights advocacy group created in 1989 to stimulate discussion of issues embodied in the 1980 UNESCO MacBride Report.

The reassessment of the McBride Report continues. For example, Andrew Calabrese has written a paper, "The MacBride Report: Its Value to a New Generation". Similarly, Stewart M. Hoover, has written a paper citing the report, titled "All Power to the Conglomerate: If Information Is a Commodity, What Price Is International Understanding?".

Transformational Diplomacy

Read Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's January 16th address at Georgetown University.

The United States Department of State is in the process of redefining its mission, and has coined the term "transformational diplomacy" to indicate the new directions. Some excepts from Secretary Rice's January speech suggest the tone of the reform:

We are living in an extraordinary time, one in which centuries of international precedent are being overturned. The prospect of violent conflict among great powers is more remote than ever. States are increasingly competing and cooperating in peace, not preparing for war. Peoples in China and India, in South Africa and Indonesia and Brazil are lifting their countries into new prominence. Reform -- democratic reform -- has begun and is spreading in the Middle East. And the United States is working with our many partners, particularly our partners who share our values in Europe and in Asia and in other parts of the world to build a true form of global stability, a balance of power that favors freedom.

At the same time, other challenges have assumed a new urgency. Since its creation more than 350 years ago, the modern state system has rested on the concept of sovereignty. It was always assumed that every state could control and direct the threats emerging from its territory. It was also assumed that weak and poorly governed states were merely a burden to their people, or at most, an international humanitarian concern but never a true security threat.

Today, however, these old assumptions no longer hold. Technology is collapsing the distance that once clearly separated right here from over there. And the greatest threats now emerge more within states than between them. The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power. In this world it is impossible to draw neat, clear lines between our security interests, our development efforts and our democratic ideals. American diplomacy must integrate and advance all of these goals together.

So, I would define the objective of transformational diplomacy this way: to work with our many partners around the world, to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system........

In the 21st century, emerging nations like India and China and Brazil and Egypt and Indonesia and South Africa are increasingly shaping the course of history. At the same time, the new front lines of our diplomacy are appearing more clearly, in transitional countries of Africa and of Latin America and of the Middle East.......

Building regional partnerships is one foundation today of our counterterrorism strategy. We are empowering countries that have the will to fight terror but need help with the means. And we are joining with key regional countries like Indonesia and Nigeria and Morocco and Pakistan, working together not only to take the fight to the enemy but also to combat the ideology of hatred that uses terror as a weapon.

We will use a regional approach to tackle disease as well. Rather than station many experts in every embassy, we will now deploy small, agile transnational networks of our diplomats. These rapid response teams will monitor and combat the spread of pandemics across entire continents. We are adopting a more regional strategy in our public diplomacy as well.......

Transformational diplomacy requires us to move our diplomatic presence out of foreign capitals and to spread it more widely across countries. We must work on the front lines of domestic reform as well as in the back rooms of foreign ministries. There are nearly 200 cities worldwide with over one million people in which the United States has no formal diplomatic presence. This is where the action is today and this is where we must be. To reach citizens in bustling new population centers, we cannot always build new consulates beyond a nation's capital.

A newer, more economical idea is what we call an American Presence Post. This idea is simple. One of our best diplomats moves outside the embassy to live and work and represent America in an emerging community of change. We currently operate American Presence Posts in places like Egypt and Indonesia and we are eager to expand both the size and the scope of this new approach.

Perhaps the newest and most cost effective way to adopt a more local posture is through a Virtual Presence Post. Here one or more of our young officers creates and manages an internet site that is focused on key population centers. This digital meeting room enables foreign citizens, young people most of all, to engage online with American diplomats who could be hundreds of miles away......

These experiences have shown us the need to enhance our ability to work more effectively at the critical intersections of diplomacy, democracy promotion, economic reconstruction and military security. That is why President Bush created within the State Department the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization. Recently, President Bush broadened the authority and mandate for this office and Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer up to $100 million to State in the event of a post-conflict operation, funds that would empower our reconstruction and stabilization efforts.

The United Nations System is the World's First Defense Against Avian Influenza

Today, the United Nations formally launched a landmark $500-million fund – with over half that amount already pledged – to jump-start relief operations in future natural and man-made disasters and save thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost to delay under the current under-funded mechanism. This mechanism is part of the reform and reorganization of the United Nations, and no doubt is to some degree a response to the 2004 tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake last year. While it is not intended specifically to respond to the avian flu, it is a mechanism that could be brought to bear. Recall that the 1918 influenza epidemic was so severe in places that they might well have qualified for such emergency assistance, had it existed.

Check out the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) website.

There is some discussion, apparently, as to whether the influenza epidemic in birds is being spread primarily by wild birds or by poultry. In either case, the U.N. system is the first line of protection.

In November the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) announced at an international wildlife conference in Nairobi, Kenya that

An avian flu early warning system, able to alert countries and communities to the arrival of potentially infected wild birds, is to be developed by an alliance of organizations led by the United Nations.

The system will be designed to alert authorities on different continents that migratory water birds are on their way.

The warning system is to be developed by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) with support and funding from the UNEP.

The Organization for Animal Health (OiE, for the French version of its original title) keeps track of wildlife as well as on domestic animal diseases and zoonosis. It also provides expertise and encourages international solidarity in the control of animal diseases, and seeks to safeguard world trade by publishing health standards for international trade in animals and animal products.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has a vigorous program against bird flu. The program website provides information on the progression of the disease in poultry. In conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO), FAO has created a Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

Of course,WHO represents the first line of global defense against an avian flu epidemic or pandemic in humans. WHO's Avian Influenza website is perhaps the best source for information on human cases of A/H5N1 influenza, and the potential for an epidemic.

These organizations are at the apex of a system of regional and national veterinary and human health organizations, helping to coordinate the direct responses to outbreaks, and to coordinate a global response to the threat.

I wish that more Americans understood how this complex system of United Nations and other multinational organizations functions to protect their health and welfare. This system has its origins in the early 20th century, and was solidified and strengthened after World War II. Thus, it represents the culmination of a century's effort to create institutions strong enough and agile enough to protect the world's population from communicable disease. We are fortunate to have this system in place now, and we should be very careful about any changes that might weaken it.

"Rethinking the Gains from Immigration: Theory and Evidence from the U.S."

Read the full paper by Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri. (January 2006.)

One realizes that foreign-born workers are "complements" of U.S.-born workers in two ways. First, foreign-born residents are relatively abundant in the educational groups in which natives are scarce. Second, their choice of occupations for given education and experience attainments is quite different from that of natives. This implies that U.S.- and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels are imperfectly substitutable. Accounting carefully for these complementarities and for the adjustment of physical capital induced by immigration, the conventional finding of immigration’s impact on native wages is turned on its head: overall immigration over the 1980-2000 period significantly increased the average wages of U.S.-born workers (by around 2%). Considering its distribution across workers, such an effect was positive for the wage of all native workers with at least a high school degree (88% of the labor force in year 2000), while it was null to moderately negative for the wages of natives without a high school degree.

Bloodfeud

I have been thinking about England from the time of Alfred the Great to that of William the Conqueror, or from the second half of the 9th century to the early part of the 12th. I just finished reading Bloodfeud by Richard Fletcher. About a year ago I read The Year 1000 : What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium by Danny Danziger and Robert Lacey. I am in the middle of Richard Cornwell’s Alfred novels (The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman).

The setting

It was relatively warm in Europe from 650 AD to 1100 AD (explaining some of the ease with which the Vikings prospered in Iceland and traveled to so many faraway places). (It was cold again from 1150 AD to 1300 AD.) The population was much less than that of today. (The population of the United Kingdom is about 60 million, while that of the British Isles a thousand years ago may have been one million.) It was the period before the First Crusade (1095) and before the Black Death hit Europe (1347).

This was a time of agricultural societies, with few towns of any size. There were, or course, no potatoes, corn, squash nor others of the new world crops. Nor was there refrigeration, nor the availability of spices and sugar. It was before coffee or tea, but it was a time some wine could be produced in the British Isles. There were wheat, barley, some vegetables, and some familiar fruits. There were cattle, pigs and horses, but meat would not keep and had to be eaten fresh. The aristocrats hunted, and I suppose the odd rabbit or fish might have found its way to the pot of a poor family, Diet would have been pretty uninteresting and pretty dreadful by modern American standards. People in the British Isles would have spent a lot of time gathering wood and drawing water. Travel was easiest by boat, even if the boat was propelled by oars and human muscle.

The Romans left Britain in the 5th century, and Germanic tribes including the Angles and the Saxons had invaded and established kingdoms in much of what is now England, driving Celts, Britons and others into corners of the islands. But Scandinavian peoples were in a centuries long process of replacing the Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, as these peoples successfully conquered and settled parts of Ireland and France (Normandy) the incursions into what is now England continued incorporating their new bases. For the period from the 9th to the 12th century, Britain would have hosted a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society.

There is very little written record from this period – the Anglo-Saxon chronicles and the Doomsday books from the time of William the Conqueror are the best sources. Consequently, good historians can’t say much with certainty. I found Fletcher’s book hard to read, but a useful reminder of how painful it must be to tease out information on the period from the available sources, and how untrustworthy those sources seem to be.

Institutional Change

Bloodfeud was an institutionalized process. The bloodfeud that is the centerpiece of the Fletcher book went on for decades and generations, killing after killing. Bloodfeud is an institution that has been found in several cultures, and paralleled wergild, the payment of financial reparations for injuring or killing someone. Under bloodfeud, retribution killing of one who killed a relative was socially acceptable in the upper classes, indeed admirable. It was not until after William the Conqueror and his followers extended regal power geographically and institutionally that the courts represented an alternative institution for the settlement of wrongful death. I think this substitution of one institution for another is very interesting during this period, and is perhaps the main story told in Fletcher’s book.

This was a time when Christianity was transforming British life. Priests were frequently married (but did not regularly officiate at the marriages of others) at the beginning of the period, but celibacy was increasingly imposed. Abbeys were created (and destroyed in Viking raids). So too was a system of nunneries, and churches were built across the country. The authority of Rome would have been extending to this outer fringe of Christianity, as the richest people started making the occasional pilgrimage. The other side of the coin is that the earlier religions were going out of fashion.

Families were apparently important. Fletcher comments that (for the upper classes) betrothal was a more important event than marriage, as betrothal established the link between families and set the economic terms of the bargain. On the one hand, there would not have been enough money for individuals to live alone; on the other hand, the extended family would have been limited due to the high death rates.

The sense of community would have been expanding. People tied to the land, too poor to own a horse, in areas poorly served by roads would not have moved around a lot. On the other hand, the Norse, Danes and others would have traveled internationally. We read of the royal families and high aristocracy moving from court to court, and theirs would have been quite a different sense of community. But one assumes that the common folk would have identified with a village, and perhaps a local squire. But power was extending, and people with time might well have identified with a county, and indeed a country.

Economic institutions were changing. More coins were going into circulation, suggesting that a money economy was being substituted for a barter economy. Towns and trade were growing, suggesting that markets were expanding and trade was being institutionalized. Slavery existed, free persons could fall into slavery through economic misfortune, and slaves could be manumitted by their owners.

Still, there would have been very little economic specialization, and few of the institutions we depend upon to articulate and coordinate the diverse productive activities of our society. In the farmstead, built by the family and neighbors, the women would have spun and woven, cooked, and cared for infants and young children. Farmers would farmed, carrying out all the tasks from planting to harvest, from breeding livestock to slaughtering animals and curing the meat.

From the point of view of modern society, one of the oddest features of the time was the institutionalized system by which bands raided or invaded into the British Isles. Kings were expected to and sought to protect their subjects from outside raids, but were faced by insurrections, and were apparently frequently unable to offer effective protection. And eventually the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was almost totally replaced by Scandinavian and ultimately Norman aristocracy. The winners took all!

It must have been a terrible time for the vast majority of the people. They could have their property stolen by Vikings, or taken in taxes by aristocrats paying for their warfare. They could be killed in the fighting. If the crops were bad, they died of hunger; if an epidemic occurred they died of disease; and there was very little they could do about it.

What were people like?

The books don’t tell you much about the “normal folk”. They were not the subject of the records left from that time, and they are not the people we enjoy as protagonists in our fiction. They would have been unschooled and illiterate (only the priests and a few of the aristocrats would have learned to read and write). They would probably have been small, in a society with not much food to give to the kids. They would have a lot of residual disability, having lived a hard life without medical services. They would be dirty, lacking the sanitary facilities necessary for what we take to be decent hygiene, and having a culture in which such hygiene had not yet been given value.

Children would often have died in infancy or childhood, mothers in childbirth. Indeed, there would have been very few old people. As a result, their attitudes toward death and age would have been very different than ours. They would probably seem insensitive to a modern American, and would have accorded respect due to age to people we might consider quite young.

I suppose that folk were more verbal than we are. The way to get new information would be to have someone tell it to you. The way to remember something would be to go over it again and again. (Conversation would have probably been pretty dull to us, with people talking interminably about crops and pests, animals and family histories.) I bet music was important, and that people sang; what else would there have been to do for entertainment?

So why is this essay in this blog?

It occurs to me that the experience with poor people in developing nations might be better preparation for understanding the normal folk of 1,000 years ago than any experience in a rich country or any reading we could do.

Looking at the evolution of a European society over centuries gives some perspective to our view of international development. The institutions change radically over such a period. The Europeans of a thousand years ago, my direct ancestors, were probably more different to me culturally than people in other countries are today.

We live much better and longer today than did my ancestors, and that is due to an accumulation of capital, which in turn is due largely to the accumulation of knowledge. But it is the political, social, economic and cultural advances made by those ancestors that created the conditions under which knowledge and capital could accumulate.

Hunger in Africa

Click Here to go to the WFP

Nearly US$2 billion in food aid will be required in 2006 to ward off widespread hunger and starvation.

East Africa

East Africa is reeling from a succession of failed rains. The World Food Program (WFP) warns that a humanitarian catastrophe could engulf the region. There are an estimated 6.25 million people at risk in the region that includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

James Morris, the head of WFP, has warned specifically that the human death toll in Kenya could rise in the coming months if new donations are not forthcoming sufficient donations to head off a disaster.

While a donation from the Government of Kenya of 60,000 metric tons of maize and rice will cover the cereal requirements for March and April, WFP only has half the quantity of beans needed in Kenya for the month of March and no vegetable oil.

Pastoralists are barely surviving

In addition, stocks of highly nutritious corn-soya blend Â? used to boost the nutritional status of vulnerable children and pregnant and nursing women Â? are extremely low.

West Africa

After one of the toughest "hunger seasons" in living memory, according to the WFP, many people across West Africa are struggling to survive. Conflict, drought and a massive locust invasion, combined with record price levels for staple foods, have left millions battling to feed themselves and their families.

As of January 16, the WFP reported:

WFP has called on the international community to rally strongly behind its efforts to tackle hunger and poverty in West Africa, the poorest region of the world.

In 2006, WFP is aiming to feed at least ten million people in West Africa with over 300,000 metric tons of food at a cost of approximately US$237 million.

To date, only US$18.4 million has been confirmed or about eight percent of total requirements.

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is in an acute phase of a long-term emergency due to a deadly combination of HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and a weakened capacity for governments to deliver basic social services: the Triple Threat.

For example, James T. Morris (the UN Secretary-GeneralÂ?s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa) reported last month from Malawi:

good rainfall could mean Malawi has a good harvest this year and as a result, for the first time in four years, could turn its full attention to medium-term and longer-term humanitarian projects rather than only focusing on immediate needs........

"Some of the challenges for the year ahead will be to reduce the high rates of acute malnutrition among children, tackle food insecurity issues, address water and sanitation problems, and help the many people who are living with HIV/AIDS, including nearly 500,000 orphans,"? he said.

Go to the Hunger Map of the World provided by the World Food Program.

Fight the use of filtering technology by governments to censor the WWW

Boing Boing has a campaign titled "Stick Michaelangelo's 'David' on your blog to protest censorware"

BOING BOING'S GUIDE TO DEFEATING CENSORWAR

Reporters Without Borders "Technical ways to get around censorship".

Support the Creation of a UN Human Rights Council

Jimmy Carter, Óscar Arias, Kim Dae Jung, Shirin Ebadi and Desmond Tutu, all Nobel Peace Prize laureates, have an op-ed piece in the New York Times supporting the creation of a Human Rights Council in the United Nations. (Free registration required.)

For years there has been a Human Rights Commission in the United Nations. Unfortunately, many of the governments that most infringed upon human rights named representatives to the Commission. It is now proposed to replace the Commission with a new Human Rights Council. (The change from a Commission reporting to the Economic and Social Council to a Council would be a step up in the U.N. hierarchy.) The Economist has a current article with more background. (Subscription required.)

John Bolton, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, opposes the plan. He is quoted as saying

“We WANT a butterfly, we don't intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success.”

I suspect we want both a United Nations Council on Human Rights, and another mechanism limited to nations which strongly support human rights. To paraphrase Bolton, remembering Muhammed Ali's phrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!

The United Nations has been a useful place for discussions among nations on human rights. The General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. I suggest that discussions among governments with very different attitudes towards human rights are important. They raise consciousness about human rights, and some countries seek to avoid embarassment before the world that condemnation by such a tribunal might entail. An upgraded Human Rights Council, created after months of negotiations, might provide a new and better venue for such discussions.

I suggest, however, that a discussion forum may not be the best place for all human rights activities and purposes. Thus the Helsinki Accords were agreed upon at the The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in 1975. In this setting the United States and its European allies could come to a important agreement with the Soviet Union with important human rights aspects.

Non-governmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, also play an important, complementary role to the U.N. talk shop.

I suggest, however, that when drastic action is an urgent necessity, the countries that are willing and capable of such action may need alternative international mechanisms. While interventions have been possible in some cases (e.g. the NATO intervention at Kosovo), in other cases (e.g. Sudan currently, Rwanda) international intervention has been "too little, too late." I don't suppose a U.N. Council formed by 47 governments will be either decisive or quick.

Perhaps a Global Consortium for Human Rights, created by treaty among human rights respecting nations with strong membership requirements might be better.

Ways you can give directly to projects, eliminating the middle man

Curious Cat suggests that Trickle Up is a good site for private giving to small projects in developing nations.

Founded in 1979, the Trickle Up Program's mission is to help the lowest income people worldwide take the first steps up out of poverty, by providing conditional seed capital and business training essential to the launch of a small business. Trickle Up has started over 135,000 businesses in more than 120 countries. Currently, Trickle Up is focusing its efforts in Cambodia, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Mali, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, and Uganda and the United States.

Trickle up reports that it "uses 82 percent of every dollar raised on our microenterprise development programs in the U.S. and internationally."

Global Giving can be used to provide funding directly to a small project in a developing nations. People seeking funds write proposals that are screened by Global Giving, and the ones it selects are posted on its website for selection by individual donors.

GlobalGiving was founded by two former World Bank executives who decided to use the Internet to create a highly efficient marketplace. The GlobalGiving platform enables more funding to reach projects throughout the globe, and, at the same time, provides a more transparent, engaging way for donors to give.

Because we enable donors to give directly to projects, they know exactly where their money is going. Donors can see progress updates on most projects as funding is received and goals are met.

Donations made through GlobalGiving are higher impact because:

* Money is going directly to a well-defined project versus supporting general operating expenses;

* Projects on globalgiving.com have exposure to thousands of donors, enabling us to aggregate multiple sources of funding for each project;

* Many projects on globalgiving.com are located in the developing world where a little money goes a long way.

Global Giving disburses 90% of online gifts (less transaction fees) to the project selected by the donor. Ten percent is retained by the GGF to cover operating expenses.

As a former Peace Corps Volunteer, I have donated through the Peace Corps Partnership Program website to an individual project. These are projects with a Peace Corps Volunteer on the ground, with the supervision and support of the Peace Corps staff in country.

All donations are tax deductible and 100% of your contribution goes to the project you select. Your donation may be eligible for a Matching Gift.

Should a project receive full support from other sources or be cancelled, any remaining funds will automatically be directed to the global fund. The global fund allows Peace Corps to allocate your donation to a community where it is most needed.

I also have donated via the Heifer Project. This organization is famous for giving livestock to small farmers in developing nations. It describes it individual projects on its website, and if you phone the project you can earmark your donation to a specific project, such as one giving rabbits to families in Uganda. Give.org reports that, for the Heifer Project, "fund raising costs were 19% of related contributions."

I think the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka is very well known as a grass roots development program that really makes a difference. When the tsunami hit in December 2004m a made a donation to them via Sarvodaya-USA.

I am just an individual, and I strongly recommend that in chosing charities you use the services of organizations providing comparative data on charities. I note:

* Guidestar, the national database of U.S. charitable organizations.
* Give.org, the giving the database of Better Business Bureau (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance reports.

I wish Americans were more generous

Check out the Economist from which this graph was taken.

Using the Internet to help Regular People Influence Bills in the U.S. Congress

Read the brief article by Zachary A. Goldfarb in The Washington Post. (March 1, 2006)

Representative government should work better when the citizens have knowledge and understanding of the legislation that is being debated, have the opportunity to inform their legislative representatives of their preferences, and can track the way their representatives vote. I have been surprised by how few in the United States have and use this information. In part, this is natural, in that we elect representatives to do the heavy intellectual lifting for us, and provide them with staffs to help in the work. But in part it is due to the difficulty of getting the information.

Years ago, I got a friend to let me into the morgue of our local newspaper to read the files on our Congressional Representative. I discovered, much to my amusement, that he annually introduced legislation to repeal the income tax, and had made a speech on the floor of Congress compaining that the United States was being invaded by spear carrying African natives and that no one seemed to know about it, nor care. I also discovered that, fortunately I guess, year after year he was judged by the press corps to rank 435th of 435 Congressmen in terms of effectiveness .

Anecdotes aside, citizens need more information. We number in the hundreds of millions. If one in a hundred gets interested in an issue, and one in a hundred of those writes a letter, many thousands of letters flood the Congress.

Earmarks are of special concern. U.S. lawmakers have increasingly added funding earmarks and other elements to bills in Conference. While the Library of Congress has made legislative language available since 1995 on THOMAS, it does not make these late additions done in the conference process available in advance. Consequently, the public has had no way to know about nor make its opinions known to its legislators before bills come to a floor vote containing these provisions.

Bill Moyers Now provides some useful instructions on how to use THOMAS, and extends the information on how to use the Congressional website itself.

Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids has a section on "How Laws Are Made" that provides teenagers with age specific guidance on tracking legislation.

New websites are being created to complement THOMAS.

GovTrack.us provides the text of legislation, House and Senate voting records, and campaign finance data online. Govtrack will e-mail registered users when specific lawmakers vote or make speeches, or when there is legislative activity on a bill related to a specific issue.

Washingtonpost.com offers a database with information about every vote in Congress since 1991.

ReadtheBill.org Civic Action is a 501(c)(4) organization that is leading an effort to persuade the U.S. Congress to establish the "72 Hours of Online Sunshine Rule" and post proposed legislation online for 72 hours before it comes to the floor.

There are simply too many efforts to utilize email and websites to inform the public about individual issues before the Congress to begin to describe.

I will point out, however, that increasingly such website contain pages that allow citizens to easily send emails to their representatives. These might include forms in which the sender can fill in his/her name and address, draft messages (that the sender can modify at will), and even engines that will identify the appropriate legislative representative from the citizens mailing address.

I tend to get form letters of response when I write my legislative representative, although I am sometimes pleasantly surprised by a personalized letter. But when I worked in the White House, in the week before Thanksgiving 5,000 letters were received from a mailing campaign, asking the President to do something about world hunger. People noticed, and the campaign stimulated and supported our work!

The Threat from Bird Flu

The Economist writes (February 23, 2006)

A research paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online on February 10th, shows that the H5N1 virus has persisted in its birthplace, southern China, for almost ten years and has been introduced into Vietnam on at least three occasions, and to Indonesia. The authors suggest that such transmissions are perpetuated mainly by the movement of poultry and poultry products, rather than by migrating birds.

This is significant because it strongly supports bird conservationists, who have been arguing that most outbreaks in South-East Asia can be linked to movements of poultry and poultry products, or infected material from poultry farms, such as mud on vehicles or people's shoes. Conservationists also argue that live animal markets have played an important role in the H5N1's spread. Such markets were the source of the first known outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997 when 20% of the chickens in live poultry markets were infected.

BirdLife International, a conservation group, reckons there are three likely transmission routes for H5N1: commercial trade and the movement of poultry; trade in wild birds; and the use of infected poultry manure as agricultural fertiliser. Bird conservationists add that although migratory birds can carry and transmit the virus, it is often not clear whether they picked up the infection from poultry.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a website on Avian Influenze. Its factsheet informs us:

Historically, there have been three HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) outbreaks in poultry in this country--in 1924, 1983 and 2004. No significant human illness resulted from these outbreaks.

The 1924 H7 HPAI outbreak was detected in and eradicated in East Coast live bird markets.

The 1983-84 H5N2 HPAI bird outbreak resulted in the destruction of approximately 17 million chickens, turkeys, and guinea fowl in the northeastern United States to contain and eradicate the disease.

In 2004, USDA confirmed an H5N2 HPAI outbreak in chickens in the southern United States. The disease was quickly eradicated thanks to close coordination and cooperation between USDA, state, local, and industry leaders. Because of the quick response, the disease was limited to one flock.

USDA classifies avian Influenza as of high (HPAI) or low (LPAI) pathegenicity. It reports that "there are 144 different characterizations of the virus based on two groups of proteins found on the surface of the virus. One group is the hemagglutinin proteins (H), of which there are 16 different types (H1-H16); the other group is the neuraminidase proteins (N), of which there are 9 different types (N1-N9). The virus detected (in birds) in several Asian and European countries is an H5N1 type of highly pathogenic (HPAI) virus."

Note especially:

LPAI poses no known serious threat to human health, however some strains of HPAI viruses can be infectious to people. Since December 2003, a growing number of Asian countries have reported outbreaks of HPAI in chickens and ducks. Humans also have been affected, most of who had direct contact with infected birds. The rapid spread of HPAI in 2004 and 2005 is historically unprecedented and of growing concern for human health as well as for animal health.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, in its excellent technical summary of the agricultural and wildlife threat from bird flu, provides information on international epidemics.

* In Mexico, an H5N2 strain transformed from LPAI to HPAI and caused an outbreak in 1994-95; the virus continued to circulate until 2003, and "nearly a billion birds have been affected."

* In the Netherlands a strain of H7N7 caused an epidemic in 2003. 30 million birds out of 100 million birds in country were killed; 255 flocks were infected. Disease spread to Belgium but was quite rapidly contained. Over 80 human cases were reported, and one veterinarian died.

* in British Columbia (Canada), an H7N3 strain broke out in 2004; over 19 million birds were culled.

CIDRAP reports that the H5N1 pandemic that started in 2003 and continues, having spread from Asia to Europe and Africa is "by far the most severe outbreak of avian influenza ever recognized. As of December 2005, over 140 million birds have died or been culled. WHO has officially recognized more than 170 human cases, with about half of them fatal, in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Turkey, and Iraq."

Some Implications for Food Security:

The poultry industry has been globalized and industrialized. I recall when I lived in Chile, 40 years ago, a friend was amazed that in Valparaiso he could buy frozen chicken from the United States cheaper than fresh chicken from Chile. U.S. producers had industrialized the production of poultry, increased productivity enormously, and changed chicken from a luxury food to a staple.

For example, this projection from the International Food Policy Research Institute:

Meat Prices, Production and Demand: 1997- 2020

* The price of poultry is expected to go down a slight 4%.
* Demand will rise by 9.4 million metric tons or 33.5% in the developed world and 38.2 million metric tons or 131.0% in the developing world by 2020.
* Developing countries will increase production by 122.8% and developed countries by 37.4%.
* Developed countries will increase net exports by 3.2 million metric tons.
* Total world production will equal 105.0 million metric tons in 2020.

Now one can find huge chicken houses all over the world, producing poultry in an industrialized process. The development of the industry has made meat and eggs more affordable for billions of people. It has also created conditions in which avian flu epidemics can reach pandemic proportions.

Nigeria imports more than a million chicks a year, and, as the Economist article indicates, there is some reason to believe that the international trade in poultry is more responsible for the spread of the disease than is the flight of wild birds.

Bird flu does not easily transmute into human flu, and no one knows whether the current bird pandemic flu will do so. As I have written, this situation seems to be one in which there is a small probability of a catastrophic event. We should certainly prepare, but we probably should not panic!

On the other hand, a pandemic of flu in poultry seems very likely. The costs of destroying poultry have already been in the billions of dollars in Asia, and the disease has spread to Africa and Europe. Fortunately agricultural experts are taking the disease very seriously.

I would point out that the disease may have nutritional effects on human populations. Of course, poor people eat less if their income goes down, and killing tens of millions of chickens will reduce income for many people. The eggs and meat produced by the poultry industry are important sources of protein, and if the supply goes down, protein nutrition will suffer somewhere.

As vegetarians demonstrate, people can get all the protein they need without meat and eggs. Perhaps one thing that should be done now is to develop nutrition education materials and train educators on how to substitute vegetable protein for poultry and eggs. We might also consider agricultural extension programs promoting legumes and other high protein crops. And we might consider other micro-livestock, such as rabbits to provide an alternative source of meat in the absence of foul.

Science versus the Bush Administration

Two stories caught my eye in yesterday's Washington Post (February 27, 2006). Both relate to prototypical examples of the war going on between the scientific community and the Bush Administration.

"In Fire's Wake, Logging Study Inflames Debate: University Study Challenges Cutting Of Burnt Timber" by Blaine Harden:

If fire ravages a national forest, as happened here in southwest Oregon when the Biscuit fire torched a half-million acres four years ago, the Bush administration believes loggers should move in quickly, cut marketable trees that remain and replant a healthy forest.

"We must quickly restore the areas that have been damaged by fire," President Bush said in Oregon four years ago after touring damage from the Biscuit fire. He called it "common sense."

An Oregon State University study of the fire in southwest Oregon found that logging after fire "has harmed forest recovery and increased fire risk". The study, published in Science, calls into question the scientific rationale behind a bill pending in Congress that would ease procedures for post-fire logging in federal forests.

A couple of weeks after the Science article appeared and infuriated the forest industry, the federal Bureau of Land Management, which footed the bill for the study of the Biscuit fire, cut off the final year of the three-year, $300,000 grant. BLM officials said the authors violated their funding contract by attempting to influence legislation pending in Congress.

After the cutoff, Democrats in the Northwest congressional delegation complained about government censorship, academic freedom and the politicization of science in the Bush administration. Within a week, the BLM backed down and restored the grant.

The article concludes:

One of the nation's best-known forest ecologists attempted to summarize the world's collective scientific knowledge on logging after fires. Jerry Franklin, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources, warned the hearing that Congress should be careful not to prescribe salvage logging as a cure-all for every forest fire.

Salvage logging and replanting can often succeed, Franklin said, if the intent is to turn a scorched landscape into a stand of trees for commercial harvest.

If, however, Congress wants to promote the ecologically sound recovery of burned federal forests, Franklin said, the overwhelming weight of scientific research suggests that "salvage logging is not going to be appropriate."

"Plan B Battles Embroil States: Proposals Mirror Red-Blue Divide" by Marc Kaufman.

Filling a void left by the Food and Drug Administration's inability to decide whether to make the "morning-after" pill available without a prescription, nearly every state is or soon will be wrestling with legislation that would expand or restrict access to the drug.

More than 60 bills have been filed in state legislatures already this year, and that follows an already busy 2005 session on emergency contraception. The resulting tug of war is creating an availability map for the pill that looks increasingly similar to the map of "red states" and "blue states" in the past two presidential elections -- with increased access in the blue states and greater restrictions in the red ones.

Recall that the FDA refused to make a decision on the approval of the over the counter sale of the drug without prescription, a policy recommended for approval by its advisory process, then a leading scientist quit the agency in protest, and its Administrator resigned having apparently reneged on promises made during his confirmation hearing.

The Battlefields

It is important to realize that the Bush Administration is supportive of most science, and indeed has proposed a major increase in funding for science based on recommendations from leaders of the scientific and industrial communities. There is no fundamental disagreement about development of nanoscience and technology, information science, space technology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, or many other fields of science.

So what are the contentious issues?

The role of science in environmental policy: The core of the problem seems to be where business profits would be reduced by government regulatory action based on scientific evidence. The Bush Administration seems skeptical about the validity of such evidence, seems to apply the cautionary principle less vigorously than many scientists would prefer, and unfortunately seems to introduce political style invective in what I would prefer to be reasoned discourse.

Reproductive biology: The Administration, and many of its backers, oppose abortion. Policies preventing funding of organizations providing abortion or abortion advice have been put into place, and evidence from the social sciences suggesting caution with such policies is challenged strongly. The Administration has regulated against government spending on embryonic stem cell research, using faulty information to justify its regulation, and in spite of the fact that many embryos that could be used to try to generate new stem cell lines are simply destroyed each year. It seems to be militating against any research that would produce chimeras -- either animals with some inserted genes from humans or humans with some inserted genes from animals. All of these policies seem to be based on religious concepts. Scientists hold that some of the prohibited research would be scientifically valuable, potentially contributing to development of useful medical technologies, and many hold that now prohibited studies would be ethically acceptable.

The teaching of evolution: Many who believe in literal interpretations of the bible seek that science teaching in the public schools be limited in any area that they see as challenging biblical teachings. The past conflict over the teaching of creationism, and the current one over teaching intelligent design as alternative theories to evolution are the hottest issues. Note, however, that there is a long history of these issues including cosmology and gradualism in geology.

International cooperation: This is a more complicated issue, but on a number of occasions the Administration has concerned or even angered scientists by actions that have restricted international travel. After 9/11 the slowdown in granting of visas for graduate education in the United States, and for scientific exchanges is of special concern. Members of the Administration have also sought to limit participation of U.S. scientists in international meetings and institutions, and indeed it is charged to substitute political criteria for scientific criteria in the appointment of advisors to the international scientific bodies.

Political versus scientific judgment: There is a line between where scientific judgment is considered to dominate and where political judgment leads. Basically, scientists should judge the evidence on matters of fact, political processes should dominate to balance the values involved. Thus the Congress allocates funds among the National Institutes of Health, but no research project is funded unless approved by a scientific review committee. The National Science Foundation is so named to symbolize the high importance of scientific to political judgment in its decision making. In two areas, the placement of this line has been especially of concern to the scientific community during this Administration: appointments and earmarking. The Administration clearly has the right and the authority to appoint its people to policy making positions in government agencies, but there is concern that in some cases the appointees have not had the appropriate professional qualifications. The number of projects with budgets earmarked by Congress, bypassing the normal scientific review process has increase markedly in recent years.

Other areas: Some have seen the scientific battles as a subset of battles in a larger "war on expertise". I suppose that one might focus more on the social sciences, and question whether the Administration is drawing appropriately on economic knowledge for its economic policies, or on knowledge from sociology, anthropology and political science for its prosecution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its promotion of democracy. But I think the five general areas described above provide a potentially useful framework for discussion.

There is an important and useful place for ideology, and there are clearly limits to scientific knowledge and rational decision making. Not only don't we know enough to always base policy and decisions on evidence, but we don't seem to be able to handle very complex decision making very well, and of course, the economics of decision making often recommend routine or non-analytic processes.

Moreover, as Voltaire said, "the ideal is the enemy of the good". It is often more important to get a policy or program that is adequate, by a political process that is acceptable to all, than to insist on a program that is more fully based on evidence and scientific judgment.

But the United States has a history in its international negotiations of arguing for more rational decisions, and opposing approaches of other nations that we judged excessively ideological. In the aftermath of 9/11 this position seems especially imperative for security reasons, but I believe more rationality also to be critically important in international economic and social development. Poor countries and poor people simply need to make better decisions on how to use their scarce resources and how to confront their pressing problems. I hate to see the United States assuming a more ideological position and thus undermining its important role as an advocate of evidence based policy and decision making.

A New Global Disease Warning System Proposed

Reaxd the full story by Kim Zetter in Wired News:

"Google's newly appointed philanthropy chief is rallying industry support for an ambitious plan to create a global early-warning system to identify and prevent the spread of infectious diseases and other disasters."

India and the Knowledge Economy

I was asked by the The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) to fill out a questionnaire. I might as well share the responses, so they are below:

I regret that I am an expert on India, and that I an not an economist professionally prepared to respond to these questions. But the questions are interesting, and I suspect the answers shed light on my views of international development.

Questionnaire on India as a Knowledge Economy

1.India is fast growing as a knowledge economy. How do you view the current scenario and its growth potential?

I see India India's growth in knowledge-intensive fields continuing. and I see that growth yielding substantial long-term economic and social benefits to India.

2.What are the areas of the knowledge sector that are driving the growth of India as a knowledge economy?

Indian culture values knowledge highly, and that cultural value is the main driver of India as a knowledge economy. I would include cultural attitudes toward knowledge as within the “knowledge sector”.

Educational services, especially those in the elite secondary schools and the world class universities, have provided the human resources that enable progress so far in developing a knowledge economy. Surely the educational system is part of the “knowledge sector”.

There seemed to be little progress until government policies open the economy, encouraging a greater export orientation and resulting in increased investment. Thus, one has to include the enabling policy environment as part of the “knowledge sector”.

Clearly software and ICT enabled services are important industrial drivers. I expect to see areas such as pharmaceuticals increasingly important, and I hope to see India benefit economically from nanotechnology based industries.

3.How important do you think is the development of knowledge economy for the progress of a country as a whole?

I am not clear what you mean by this question.

In the sense of using improved knowledge as a driving force behind all aspects of Indian development, I think the development of the knowledge economy is central to development. I think the experience in Western nations is that improved technology and improved organization drive the productivity improvement that in turn drives long term growth. Thus, modern knowledge institutions are critical to improving agricultural productivity, providing good health services, etc.

In the narrower sense of the explosive growth of knowledge intensive economic activity in Bangalore and Mumbai, I think there is a significant opportunity and some threat. The growth of this sector provides resources, impetus and an example that would serve India’s national development well.

However, many have commented on the curse of mineral wealth, suggesting that countries that have relatively large mineral exports have often failed to utilize the income generated to educate their people, and have utilized the resources in ways to allow reforms to be postponed. Elites have benefited greatly, but their countries did not develop. I suppose something of the same kind could happen in India, based on the export of knowledge intensive goods and services, produced in an enclave productive environment. The best brains in India might do India more good focusing on India’s problems and India’s development, than being rented out to solve problems of rich countries.

4.Education being the fundamental enabler of the knowledge economy, what does the education system of the country needs to do in order to develop the skills of knowledge workers?

Interesting that there should be a gramatical error in the phrasing of the question.

The success to date has been based on elite schools and especially a capacity in science, engineering and other technology fields developed over decades. This of course has to be continued.

I would suggest that educational excellence must be spread much more widely if India as a whole is to enter the knowledge economy. I would hate to see a dual society institutionalized with an educated elite participating fully in globalization, and an uneducated majority left behind.


5.It is being said that while knowledge workers can further advance as entrepreneurs in a knowledge economy, the industrial worker or the layman is being left behind and thus creating a divide. Your comments on this.

I think that pay reflects the supply and demand for job skills. The development of India, driven by certain knowledge intensive industries, is increasing the demand for goods and services. But the increase in demand is not uniform, and the demand for some services is increasing faster than for others.

Development means, importantly, increasing productivity, and specifically increasing worker productivity. This too is proceeding unevenly.

Globalization also means that the markets affecting the supply and demand for labor are expanding. As India gets richer, its low-wage labor force will be facing competition from other nations with still lower labor costs.

The industrial worker or agricultural worker with little education and few skills, producing in sectors where productivity is increasing faster than demand, is in real trouble. The balance between demand and supply for his labor is changing in the wrong direction.

The solution to the problem is in part mobility. It involves the willingness to move from geographic areas with poor job prospects to others with better prospects. It also involves the ability to move from occupations with poor prospects to others with better prospects. This in turn depends on a social and educational system that prepares people to move over, and to move up.

6.What are the key issues that India needs to address to spur growth and innovation in the knowledge sector? What does India need to do to create and sustain an effective knowledge economy?

The economists would probably say policies and institutions. I don’t think India will progress as much as it should without a policy environment that encourages investment and innovation. And I think it important to strengthen institutions including India’s participation in international markets, legal institutions, governance institutions, intellectual property rights institutions, etc.

The security specialist would probably emphasize stability. Certainly war with China or Pakistan would not enhance India’s development. (History suggests that the great wars usually were not predicted decades in advance, so today’s peace can not always be depended on tomorrow.)

The engineer would probably point to India’s infrastructure, which seems inadequate to the task before the country and fragile.

Anything that can be done to insure good fortune should be done. Pandemic diseases, climate change, and global competition for natural resources seem to have significant potential to emerge as threats in the next couple of decades.

7.How do you view India in the next two decades as a knowledge economy in the global scenario?

“Through a glass, darkly.”

The continuance of current trends seems more likely than any other scenario. India would grow rapidly, while China grows still more rapidly.

Globalization would continue, supported by continuing technological development, and by further expansion of a global trading system that encourages specialization in which countries increasingly exploit their comparative advantage. India would look increasingly outside its borders.

Environmental problems and resource shortages would be exacerbated, and India would struggle to make the institutional changes necessary to apply the increasing global understanding of these problems to their solution.

The world’s largest democracy, serving a huge nation with a hugely diverse population, will struggle to adapt politically and institutionally to an ever increasing rate of social, economic and environmental changes.

8.Any other comments?

Good luck!

Curious Cat Management Improvement: Manufacturing and the Economy

Curious Cat Management Improvement: Manufacturing and the Economy

Curious Cat cites data indicating that U.S. manufacturing value added increased by 39 percent from 1990 to 2001, as compared with 22 percent for world manufacturing value added.

I think that other countries were able to displace U.S. manufacturers in labor intensive industries, but that the United States was able to maintain a lead in knowledge intensive manufacturing.

This is good for the economy as a whole, but hard on the people, towns and regions in the United States that lived on labor intensive manufacturing, and didn't have the educational or skill resources to move from the labor intensive jobs that they had lost into the knowledge intensive jobs that were being created.

To prepare for a still more knowledge intensive economy of the future, we will have to do a better job educating our people, and we will have to be sure that the economy promotes and supports high levels of innovation. Unfortunately, that also implies that we will have to allow high rates of "creative destruction"; there will be short term losers.

I hope we can also maintain policies that keep those losses to the short term, and support people as they recover from the ill effects of the destruction (no matter how "creative").

One Chance in 100 of Catastophe

During the 20th century, there was one pandemic of influenza that killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people, orders of magnitude more than any flu pandemic in human history.

Katrina hit New Orleans, a once-in-a-century event, and killed 2000 people and caused unprecedented damage.

There are estimates the magnitudes of events that will only be expected to be exceeded once per century -- floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc.

One question is how do we, as a society plan for catastrophic events that have low probabilities. We, as individuals, are affected by an "availability" falicy of memory -- we often function as if the things we recall most easily are the most likely, and as if things not available easily in our memory do not concern us. Not a good idea when facing a once-in-a-century probability of catastrophy.

As societies, we are scarcely better. We rebuild cities on the rubble left by hurricanes and earthquakes, and on the lava from previous eruptions of active volcanoes. We build in flood planes, and sites prone to mud slides, and rebuild buildings destroyed by wild fires.

But there is another issue, and that is our difficulty in perceiving and responding to emergencies that occur on a time scale measured in decades or centuries.

HIV/AIDS emerged as a new disease in the 20th century, I think the only really major new disease of the 20th century, and has killed tens of millions of people. It was painful to see the lack of global response in the early years to the epidemic that seemed so obviously likely to kill millions or tens of millions.

Jared Diamond, in his book, Collapse, points out how societies have been destroyed when they were unable to respond to climate changes or environmental problems that developed over decades or centuries. His analysis suggests that if the Greenland Norse had recognized their problems caused by the Little Ice Age and the environmental degredation that they were causing, and that the Inuit were handling things better, they might have become more like the Inuit and survived. His analysis suggests that if societies that were seeding their own destruction by deforesting their environment recognized what they were doing, their catastrophe could have been averted. But many past societies seem not to have recognized these problems that develop over a period of decades or centuries.

The predictions of global climate change suggest real problems by the end of the 21st century. By the end of the century trend analysis indicates that we will almost certainly have nearly twice the global population of 2000. Anyone who reads can see deforestation, desertification, loss of topsoil, depletion of oil and other fossil fuel reserves, salinization of prime farm land, depletion of water resources and reduction of biodiversity occuring at rates that make the prospects for the year 2100 quite dim.

Yet the social response to the situation seems slight and pales before the challenge. Perhaps it is because our political leaders are old enough that they will not see the end of the century, and they focus on the next election rather than the next generation! But the children born in this decade may, and their children will probably see the year 2100!

"Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability"

Read the online book by the Board on Sustainable Development of the National Research Council (1999).

From the Executive Summary: "This study, conducted by the National Research Council's Board on Sustainable Development, is an attempt to reinvigorate the essential strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well-being. To that end, the Board seeks to illuminate critical challenges and opportunities that might be encountered in serious efforts to pursue goals of sustainable development......in our judgment, it is over the next two generations that many of the stresses between human development and the environment will become acute. It is over this period that serious progress in a transition toward sustainability will need to take place if interactions between the earth's human population and life support systems are not to significantly damage both. Additionally, two generations is a realistic time frame for scientific and technological analysis that can provide direction, assess plausible futures, measure success—or the lack of it—along the way, and identify levers for changing course.....In the Board's judgment, the primary goals of a transition toward sustainability over the next two generations should be to meet the needs of a much larger but stabilizing human population, to sustain the life support systems of the planet, and to substantially reduce hunger and poverty......Certain current trends of population and habitation, wealth and consumption, technology and work, connectedness and diversity, and environmental change are likely to persist well into the coming century and could significantly undermine the prospects for sustainability. If they do persist, many human needs will not be met, life support systems will be dangerously degraded, and the numbers of hungry and poor will increase.......based on our analysis of persistent trends and plausible futures, the Board believes that a successful transition toward sustainability is possible over the next two generations. This transition could be achieved without miraculous technologies or drastic transformations of human societies. What will be required, however, are significant advances in basic knowledge, in the social capacity and technological capabilities to utilize it, and in the political will to turn this knowledge and know-how into action......Priorities for action include the following: • Accelerate current trends in fertility reduction......• Accommodate an expected doubling to tripling of the urban system in a habitable, efficient, and environmentally friendly manner.......• Reverse declining trends in agricultural production in Africa; sustain historic trends elsewhere."

Sessions at Upcoming APS Meetings

Irving Lerch has organized sessions that are likely to be interesting at upcoming American Physical Society Meetings.

2006 APS March Meeting (Monday–Friday, March 13–17, 2006) in Baltimore, Maryland

* Scientists from Developing Countries: is There an Effective Way to Support Meaningful Research?

2006 APS April Meeting (Saturday–Tuesday, April 22–25, 2006) in Dallax, Texas

* Public and Private Funding for International Research

* Science and Development: Innovation Systems for Fighting Poverty

* Scholars at Risk

Two Stories Related to Wrongheaded Federal Policies

Two stories in the Washington Post's Metro section today illustrate policies that seem to me antithetical to the position I take in this blog:

"Duncan Sues FDA Over Canadian Drugs" by Tim Craig

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to protect the citizens of this country against dangers from pharmaceutical products. But I don't think there is any danger to the public from drugs approved for sale in Canada! Indeed many of the drugs that would be imported are in fact produced in the United States. I hope that the FDA is not suggesting that the pharmaceutical industry is, with its permission, producing drugs for the Canadian market that would not be acceptable for U.S. citizens to use. I suspect doublespeak, and the health being protected is that of industrial balance sheets rather than patients.

"Compromise Predicted in Md. On Stem Cell Research Funds: Amended Legislation Similar to Approach by Ehrlich" by John Wagner

Legislation is pending before the Maryland state legislature to "authorize state money not only for embryonic stem cell research, which many conservative lawmakers oppose, but also for less controversial work on adult cells."

Stem cell research not only offers important scientific information, but eventually important medical advances. The research community has been hindered in the United States from vigorous exploration of this field by an irrational ruling by the Federal Government.

There are currently 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States, many of which are destroyed every year when their donors decide they are no longer needed for their own fertility enhancement treatment. It would not be at all unethical to divert some of these into biomedical research rather than simply destroying them, especially if by so doing we could eventually improve lives and avert unnecessary deaths.

Maryland could do well while doing good if the legislature were to pass this bill. Maryland is fortunate to be a world leader in biomedical research, in large part due to hosting Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health. Basic biomedical research requires seed money, and this legislation could provide it to local researchers while the misguided Federal policy denies such funding to others. Given a head start, Maryland researchers will soon reap commercial advantage for the State from their stem cell research!

California and other countries have seen the opportunity and have grasped it!

Olympic Hights of Ineptitude

Read the full story by Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post. (February 24, 2006.)

The U.S. government first denied and then granted a visa to Goverdhan Mehta, the president of the International Council for Science. "In a statement, the International Council for Science expressed 'grave concern at the hostile treatment' of Mehta at the U.S. Consulate in Madras. 'It clearly illustrates that, despite some progress, all is far from well with regards to the visa policies and associated practices for scientists wishing to enter the USA,' the organization said."

"Mehta and another Indian scientist, P.C. Kesavan, a Madras geneticist specializing in radiation biology who was also refused a visa unless he provided detailed information about his background and the potential applications of his work, said senior scientists have better things to do with their time."

In another news story (this time from the Wall Street Journal), Kevin Warsh's nomination has been confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. He has been working as a White House Special Assistant, and previously worked at Morgan Stanley's investment banking department. His appointment was apparently intended to put someone with a business perspective on the Board.

But is this another crony appointment?

Kevin Drum writes in his column Political Animal (echoing Noam Scheiber in the New Republic):

If you were nominating someone for a seat on the Federal Reserve, what would you look for? At a guess, you'd want someone with a PhD in economics and a good background in monetary policy, right?

Instead, how about a law degree, a few years of experience in the M&A trenches at Morgan Stanley, a well honed loyalty to the White House, and a father who donates a lot of money to Republican causes? Because that's what we just got in 35-year-old Kevin Warsh.

"A Phony Science Gap?"

Read the opinion piece by Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post, Wednesday, February 22, 2006.

Samuelson notes that U.S. universities graduate eleven percent of science and engineering undergraduate degrees, and there has been a significant increase in the number of such degrees since 1990. Graduate S&E enrollments have increased 22 percent since their low in 1998. He cites Duke University results suggesting that the numbers of s&E graduates in China and India have been exagerated. He takes comfort in the United States being able to attract S&E personnel from abroad.

He points out, reasonably, that if we want more S&E trained people, we ought to offer them more money. He sees reason to believe that S&E salaries are indeed increasing relative to other professions. (I had a conversation the other day with an engineering executive who pointed out that many high level executives in corporate America are engineering graduates, but their salaries are not included in the calculations because -- although their engineering education was important to their career development -- they are no longer doing engineering work.)

Some excerpts:

"Ever since Sputnik (1957) and the "missile gap" (1960), we've been warned that we're being overtaken technologically. Up to a point, that's inevitable. As countries modernize, they need more scientists and engineers. Technological competence expands."

"But a country's capacity for scientific and commercial innovation does not correlate directly with its number of scientists and engineers. Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter. Here the United States has some significant strengths: widespread ambition; an openness to new ideas, especially from the young; an acceptance of skilled immigrants; strong connections between universities and businesses; and well-funded venture capitalists."

"In some ways the worldwide "knowledge economy" is unthreatening. Good ideas and products spread quickly. Knowledge is stateless. Two Americans invented the computer chip; now it's used everywhere. Still, we need to maintain a world-class science and engineering workforce. We want to keep high-value economic activity here, and we need to ensure superior military technology.

"Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers."

Let me make a modest proposal.

The United States faces a significant demographic shift now that the "baby boom" generation is about to reach retirement age. Unless we do something about it, the demographic shift is going to cause big problems paying pensions and health care costs. We have a huge country, with lots of areas of low population density. So lets encourage immigration! Lets attract lots of S&E trained people, and lots of people with the other skills and with the education needed to run a knowledge economy. Lets create the economic conditions so that these folk can continue to innovate and increase productivity. Lets offer them the fruits of their labor, but let them pay for the costs of public services to our aging population.

The Fundamental Role of Science and Technology in International Development: An Imperative for the U.S. Agency for International Development

Read the report online at the National Academy Press.

This report by a distinguished panel reviews the role of science and technology in international development and considers the way in which the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) promotes and uses science and technology in its programs.

The report is organized to emphasize five topics or issues:

* Improving child health and child survival;
* Expanding access to drinking water and sanitation;
* Supporting agricultural research to help reduce hunger and poverty;
* Promoting microeconomic reform to stimulate private sector growth and technological innovation; and
* Preventing and responding to natural disasters.

The report makes three recommendations:

* First, that USAID should reverse the decline in its support for building science and technology capacity in developing countries.

* Second, that the agency should strengthen the capacity of its leadership and program managers to effectively integrate science and technology into its programs.

* Third, that USAID should promote and coordinate the science and technology-related activities that other US government departments and agencies undertake in developing countries.

David Dickson has written a news article in SciDev.Net noting the publication of the book .

By the Committee on Science and Technology in Foreign Assistance, National Research Council, 2006. (175 pages)

Sonnet

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,
This furtive age, this age endowed with power
To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar
Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find
What swims before his prow, what swirls behind--
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Falls from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts.....they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; But there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric; undefiled
Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still
Upon this world from the collective womb
Is spewed all day the red triumphant child.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Part Six,
"Huntsman, What Quarry?" 1939

Knowledge and Diplomacy: Science Advice in the United Nations System

Description: "In the international effort to advance human health, welfare, and development while better managing and conserving the environment and natural resources, there is a clear and growing recognition of the role of scientific and technical knowledge in global governance. This has created an urgent need for the United Nations to equip itself with the capability to bring scientific knowledge to inform international decision making. Given the complexity and diversity of United Nations programs, organs, and mandates, this report focuses on the main functions of the United Nations that affect international governance in the fields related to sustainable development, with reference to the taxonomy of the key United Nations organs in which these functions are undertaken. Efforts have been made to ensure that the major categories of United Nations organs have been covered and therefore the results of the review are representative of the functioning of the United Nations system."

Committee for Survey and Analysis of Science Advice on Sustainable Development to International Organizations, Development, Security, and Cooperation, National Research Council, 120 pages, 2002.

The chapters titled "Elements of Science Advice", "UN Sustainable Development Activities and Their Science Advisory Processes" and "Structure of Science Advice in the United Nations System Today" should be useful in a wide variety of circumstances.

UPI has an article by SHAUN WATERMAN, its Homeland and National Security Editor, about a Congressman's effort to pressure the Congressional Research Service. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Permanent Select on Intelligence,

"blasted the Congressional Research Service for bias in two reports it produced on the National Security Agency's program of warrantless counter-terrorist surveillance.......The reports questioned the legal reasoning the administration has employed to justify both the program and the way that only a handful of senior lawmakers from both parties were briefed on it..... 'The plain message people were getting was that The president broke the law, he said. 'That is wrong. It requires a strong answer.'"

The article goes on to cite several others who feel the Congressional Research Service is careful to guarantee neutrality of its reports, and left me with the impression that Hoekstra wanted to silence potential critics more than to set the record straight.

I was especially interested in the following:

"Citing recent reports about efforts to silence government scientists on the subject of global warming, Beth Daley, of the watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight, said Hoekstra's letters were part of a Republican "campaign against expertise."

"'These complaints,' she told UPI, 'are part of their campaign against accurate information, against science.'

"She accused CRS management of allowing a 'culture of fear and intimidation' to develop at the service.......veterans of the service say that taking positions -- which may be unpopular with one side or the other in any debate -- is essential to their work."

The Project on Government Oversight is an interesting NGO, using its resources to keep the government honest and its operations transparent. If their Communications Director states publicly that there is a Republican campaign against expertise, the comment is worthy of attention.

Daley's comment is cited by Kevin Drum in his column in the Washington Monthly yesterday. Drum goes on to describe the case of Louis Fisher of the CRS, who is trying to survive the fallout from his statement that the 1989 Wistleblower Act has not proven very effective in rooting out government problems. Drum concludes:

Newspaper reporters might well take note of this: objectivity is not neutrality. The fact that there are two sides to a story does not make both sides equally valid. Louis Fisher appears to recognize this, and the only question left is whether he'll be fired for saying so. Stay tuned.

Drum cites Chris Mooney's great "Requiem for an Office", written on the tenth anniversary of the closing of the Office of Technology Assessment by the Newt Gingrich led Congress. Money writes:

following the "Gingrich revolution" of 1994, incoming congressional Republicans dismantled their authoritative scientific advisory office in a stunning act of self-lobotomy. Obsessed with shrinking government, Gingrich's acolytes denounced OTA for being too slow in its assessments and (some added) suspect in its political orientation. The late Cong. George Brown of California, leading the Democratic minority on the House Science Committee at the time, memorably countered that the agency had served as Congress's "defense against the dumb," and continued, "it is shameful that OTA was defenseless against a very dumb decision by Congress."

Mooney gives the last word to Jack Gibbons, the former Director of OTA, and I can do no less:

A signatory to a prominent 2004 statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists denouncing the Bush administration's scientific stewardship, Gibbons told me that while science has always been politicized to some extent, "It's never been this blatant or this bad. We almost wistfully think back to the Reagan years." But he also explained how OTA, had it remained in existence, could have served as a partial check on rampant science politicization and misrepresentations of scientific information. The office might have prepared an independent assessment of the number of available embryonic stem cell lines, for instance, so that Congress wouldn't have had to trust President Bush's woefully incorrect claim that "more than 60" such lines were in existence as of August 2001. OTA might also have helped set the record straight on the science of climate change--a task it could have accomplished in congressionally endorsed studies that would have been hard to ignore.

OTA, Gibbons added, defused politicized science disputes by providing an authoritative, baseline body of information that all sides could accept. Characteristically, Gibbons reached into his grab bag of quotations in order to accentuate the point. He invoked the words of Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York: "We can each have our own opinions, but we cannot each have our own facts." That's a lesson whose value, we can only hope, will ultimately prevail upon Congress--whether Republican-controlled or otherwise.