https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Sustainable Development Goals

Impacts of COVID-19 on people’s food security: Foundations for a more resilient food system

1.
The movement of organisms and dispersal of propagules is fundamental to the maintenance of populations over time. However, the existence of barriers, created through the spatial configuration of habitats, may significantly affect dispersal patterns and thus influence community dynamics and resource sustainability.

2.
Within marine environments unstructured or open habitats may form partial or complete ecological barriers due to elevated risk of predation or physical stresses associated with them. The existence and effects of such barriers may be of particular importance when considering the establishment of marine protected areas with a fisheries enhancement focus.

3.
In this paper, the spillover of post-settlement queen conch (Strombus gigas) from a protected area in the Turks and Caicos Islands is investigated. It is hypothesized that the reserve boundaries overlap with a series of shallow, sand habitats that effectively enclose the protected population, reducing the spillover of conch into the adjacent fished areas.

4.
To test this, density gradient maps for juvenile and adult conch populations were constructed using underwater visual survey data at 68 sites within and surrounding the protected area. These maps illustrate very low densities coinciding with poor, shallow sand habitats along the two marine boundaries of the reserve where spillover is expected to take place.

5.
These sand habitats are thought to create ecological barriers to a slow, sedentary gastropod largely due to their shallowness (physical stresses of solar exposure or anoxia) and lack of food reducing the tendency of individuals to move across these areas, despite the 10-times higher density of adult queen conch observed in the protected area compared with outside.



Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of natural barriers on the spillover of a marine mollusc: implications for fisheries reserves

In this paper we aim to evaluate the effects of a 3-year resilience intervention (the SUR1M project in Niger) on the beneficiaries of the project. The evaluation was structured around the project's theory of change and designed to evaluate three elements along that theory of change: the types of responses beneficiaries adopt when faced with adverse events; their ability to recover from those events; and the long-term impact on their well-being, measured through their level of food (in)security. Using a quasi-experimental approach and an ex-post treatment versus control framework we found significant effects of the project on beneficiaries' capacities to engage in (positive) responses and on their abilities to recover from shocks. The analysis did not find however any significant difference between the well-being of the beneficiaries and that of the control group, suggesting that, after three years, the higher level of resilience of the beneficiaries did not translate into a clear positive impact on their well-being.

Impacts of resilience interventions – Evidence from a quasi-experimental assessment in Niger

Taking a food systems approach is a promising strategy for improving diets. Implementing such an approach would require the use of a comprehensive set of metrics to characterize food systems, set meaningful goals, track food system performance, and evaluate the impacts of food system interventions. Food system metrics are also useful to structure debates and communicate to policy makers and the general public. This paper provides an updated analytical framework of food systems and uses this to identify systematically relevant metrics and indicators based on data availability in low and middle income countries. We conclude that public data are relatively well available for food system drivers and outcomes, but not for all of the food system activities. With only minor additional investments, existing surveys could be extended to cover a large part of the required additional data. For some indicators, however, targeted data collection efforts are needed. As the list of indicators partly overlaps with the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs), part of the collected data could serve not only to describe and monitor food systems, but also to track progress towards attaining the SDGs.

/pdf/metrics-to-analyze-and-improve-diets-through-food-systems-in-lvxgukkblo.pdf

Metrics to analyze and improve diets through food Systems in low and Middle Income Countries

More than half the world’s population now live in urban areas. In developing countries, these areas will become home to almost all of the projected 50 per cent population growth that will occur between now and 2030, swelling urban populations by a further 1.3 billion by 2030 and 2.5 billion by 2050 (GMR 2013). As a result, by the middle of the century, urban dwellers will account for more than 85 per cent of the population in the more developed countries and more than 65 per cent in the less developed regions. Overall, it is expected that seven out of ten people will be living in urban areas by 2050 (UN-Habitat 2011).
 In this rapidly changing environment, megacities, urban corridors and city regions have attracted the largest attention of both academics and policymakers. In comparison, far less is known about smaller and emergent urban areas (Ferre, Ferreira and Lanjouw 2011), even if most of the current urban population in the world live in small and medium towns (WUP 2012) and the major part of population growth is projected to take place in those towns under one million people (using 2005 UN population estimates).
 As part of the Tomorrow-Today Horizon Scanning Initiative supported by IDS, the project ‘Exploring the Potential and Limits of the Resilience Agenda in Rapidly Urbanising Contexts’ aims to analyse the emergence of the concept of ‘urban resilience’ in the literature and to assess the potential and limitations of this concept as an element of policy narrative, especially in the context of rapid urbanisation processes. In order to give a more empirical dimension to this analysis, we also included two case studies (one large city – Mumbai in India, and one smaller city – Khulna in Bangladesh) with the aim of relying on these case studies to better understand some of the crucial processes characterising urbanisation, to scrutinise the dynamic and evolving linkages and processes that connect the rural and the urban in the peri-urban interface and the ways in which resources are differently defined, appropriated and used by various interest groups.

Christophe Béné

Papers

Impacts of COVID-19 on people’s food security: Foundations for a more resilient food system

Effects of natural barriers on the spillover of a marine mollusc: implications for fisheries reserves

Impacts of resilience interventions – Evidence from a quasi-experimental assessment in Niger

Metrics to analyze and improve diets through food Systems in low and Middle Income Countries

Exploring the Potential and Limits of the Resilience Agenda in Rapidly Urbanising Contexts