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UN/DESA Policy Brief #59: Corona crisis causes turmoil in financial markets
Financial sector measures should complement other national and international actions to address the health, social and economic impact of the crisis.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #54: Global development trends at the turn of the century
From the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, there are three major issues that shaped the world economy: the convergence of developing countries’ income with respect to the average income of developed economies; the growing unbalances in the global economy which led eventually to the global financial crisis; and the adoption and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #53: Reflection on development policy in the 1970s and 1980s
After almost three decades of remarkable progress since the end of the Second World War, economic conditions started to deteriorate in the 1970s. Economic growth slowed down in all parts of the world during the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. Before the oil price shock of 1973, the annual growth of world gross product had been at 5.3 per cent, while during the rest of the 1970s, annual world growth reached only 2.8 per cent.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #52: The Marshall Plan, IMF and First UN Development Decade in the Golden Age of Capitalism: lessons for our time
The Golden Age of Capitalism spanned from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the early 1970s, when the Bretton Woods monetary system collapsed. It was a period of economic prosperity with the achievement of high and sustained levels of economic and productivity growth. During the Golden Age, the themes taken up by World Economic and Social Survey, henceforth referred to as the Survey, varied from year to year, in response to pressing development concerns.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #51: Reflecting on the World Economic and Social Survey's 70 years of development policy analysis
In drawing the most relevant lessons for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Economic and Social Survey 2017 systematically reviews the seven decades of development discussions contained in the publication – the oldest continuous publication of its kind.
UN/DESA Policy Brief #50: International finance to support climate change resilience
In the past 20 years, weather-related disasters affected 4.2 billion people worldwide, with a large loss of life and livelihoods. The global annual average cost of climatic disasters, including floods, storms, droughts and heat waves, is estimated to have risen from $64 billion during the period 1985-1994 to $154 billion in the period 2005-2014. A more complete estimate of global costs, taking into account the loss associated with slow-onset climate events (e.g., sea-level rise and desertification), is likely to yield a larger figure.