30 juillet 2015

By Monika Queisser. In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell recalls his experiences in the 1920s living on the margins of society in the two European capitals. Orwell joined the “tramps”, as they were called, the army of people, mostly male, without stable housing, moving around between cheap hotels, shelters and often prison, occasionally finding casual jobs, pawning their few belongings to buy food, and living with the constant threat of hunger, illness and violence. More...

By Glenda Quintini and Stéphane Carcillo. Agnès attended a French High School but left at 16 with poor qualifications. She had not enjoyed school and was pleased to leave but now she would be pleased to go back as work has not been as pleasant or easy as she had expected. More...

By Ariana Mozafari. On 3 July, Secretary-General Angel Gurría gave a lecture at the London School of Economics entitled, “Climate: what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what we can do about it – six months to COP21”. He discussed the usual mitigation tactics that royal family members and celebrities are jumping onto: rewiring the economy, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, financing investments in green infrastructure, and aligning contradictory policies to complement the climate effort. More...

By Gabriela Ramos. In 2009, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo published her book, “Dead Aid”which shocked much of the international development community by claiming that ‘traditional’ systems of official development assistance (ODA) to Africa were not delivering, and arguing why we must find alternatives. More...

By OECD Statistics Directorate. For over a decade now, the OECD has been spearheading work on well-being measurement and policy, in line with its mission of promoting “Better Policies for Better Lives”. Many individuals and organisations around the world have also been part of a global call for better measures and policies for progress “beyond GDP”. More...

By Paul Swaim. The recovery is underway, but millions of workers risk being trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder. While unemployment is on a downward trajectory in most countries, about one-half of the crisis-related increase in joblessness in the OECD area still persists more than seven years after the crisis began. More...

By K. Vela Velupillai. Pope Francis has been in the news recently with his encyclical on climate change, but did you know that the Catholic Church helped to shape modern economic theory? When the Second Vatican Council was reconvened in September 1963 following the death of Pope John XXIII, it was asked to “start a dialogue with the contemporary world”. In October, the Pontifical Academy of Science invited 17 experts to “gather together the latest results of a new branch of science, econometry, and to present them to political economists in order to aid them in formulating those plans for a more stable security and for greater development which can contribute so much to the well-being and peace of nations”. More...

By Maroussia Klep. There’s an old saying that “you can’t really understand someone else’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes”. Personally, I am not sure that you can ever truly understand what it is like to be that person, but you can make every effort to consider his or her perspective. More...

By Angel Gurría. One dollar in aid for trade generates eight dollars in extra trade for all developing countries and 20 dollars for low-income countries according to OECD calculations. These are impressive returns on investment. But these numbers do not tell the uplifting stories about the lives of men and women that have been bettered by Aid for Trade programmes, the employment generated because of trade creation and diversification, or the additional domestic and foreign investment that countries attracted. More...