Controls as a Sharable Knowledge Commodity: An Architecture for Open Exchange

The world seems to be getting more dangerous: terrorists; fraudulent corporations; money laundering; hurricanes; pandemics. Governments and organizations respond with a flurry of new controls. In some cases these are centrally mandated (e.g. Sarbanes Oxley). In others, organizations struggle to find their own control solutions. Seldom, however, do organizations work together as a community of common interests to share solutions to their control threats. In this paper we consider how an open exchange of control solutions might be supported electronically. We assume a community of similar organizations that wish to exchange detailed knowledge about organizational control techniques. These might be non-competing institutions, such as libraries, customs agencies, and even universities; or, they may in fact be competing organizations, wishing to exchange control solutions in dimensions where they do not compete – e.g. the airlines exchanging best practice about safety and security. The main point is to propose an information technology architecture that permits a view of organizational controls as shareable, exchangeable knowledge commodities.     

The Global Child Labor Problem: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?

The problem of child labor has moved from a matter of regionaland national concern to one of international debate and possibleglobal persuasion and policy intervention. In crafting policyfor mitigating this enormous problem of our times, it is importantto start with a proper theoretical and empirical understandingof the phenomenon. What gives rise to child labor, and whatare its consequences? What interventions might end child laborwithout hurting children? A well-meaning but poorly designedpolicy can exacerbate the poverty in which these laboring childrenlive, even leading to starvation. The article surveys the largeand rapidly growing literature on this subject, focusing mainlyon the new literature based on modern economic theory and econometrics.It also looks at some of the broad policy implications of thesenew findings, with the objective of contributing to better informeddiscussion and policy design.     

The pattern and causes of economic growth in India

This paper presents the broad macro parameters of the growthof the Indian economy since the nation's independence and across-country evaluation of where India stands, drawing outthe patterns discernible in these aggregative statistics. Thepaper gives an overview of the on-going debate on the componentsof the Indian growth and the relative importance of the differentpolicies in the 1980s and 1990s. It contributes to this debateby identifying the landmark years, and analysing the politicsbehind some of the economics. The paper also analyses the factorsbehind the changes in India's savings rate and the relationbetween growth and development, on the one hand, and the natureof labour market regulation, on the other.     

Policy change and learning in the RBC model

What is the impact of surprise and anticipated policy changes when agents form expectations using adaptive learning rather than rational expectations? We examine this issue using the standard stochastic real business cycle model with lump-sum taxes. Agents combine knowledge about future policy with econometric forecasts of future wages and interest rates. Dynamics under learning can have large impact effects and a gradual hump-shaped response, and tend to be prominently characterized by oscillations not present under rational expectations. These fluctuations reflect periods of excessive optimism or pessimism, followed by subsequent corrections.