- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
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Founded in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which created the League of Nations. In 1946, it became the first specialized agency of the UN. Based in Geneva, it formulates international labor standards, setting out desired minimum rights for workers: freedom of association; the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining; equality of opportunity and treatment; and the abolition of forced labor. It also compiles international labor statistics. One reason for its formation was the hope that international labor standards would stop countries using lower standards to gain a competitive advantage. From the 1980s onwards, the ILO approach came under attack as attention turned to the costs of high labor standards, notably slower economic growth. Universal minimum labor standards might also work against free trade. Imposing rich-country labor standards on poorer countries might help keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
Industry:Economy
Un coup de main pour les pays pauvres des pays riches. Cela, au moins, a l'intention. Dans la pratique, dans de nombreux cas aide a fait bien peu pour ses destinataires (amélioration des soins de santé constitue une exception notable) et a aggravé parfois questions. Les pays pauvres qui reçoivent beaucoup d'aide poussent pas plus vite, en moyenne, que ceux qui reçoivent très peu de choses. En revanche, peut-être le plus réussi programme aide jamais – le plan Marshall pour reconstruire l'Europe après la seconde guerre mondiale – impliqués des pays riches, donnant aux autres pays riches jusqu'à présent. Au cours de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle les pays riches a donné plus de 1 billion $ dans l'aide aux plus pauvres. Durant les années 1990, toutefois, les flux de l'aide publique a stagné. En 2001, aide officielle était d'un peu plus $50 milliards, environ un quart du PIB des pays donateurs. En plus de cela étaient les dons privés des ONG (organisations non-gouvernementales) d'une valeur d'un montant estimatif de 6 milliards $. De plus en plus, ces sommes ont été dépassées par les investissements directs privés étrangers. Pour tenter de relancer l'aide internationale, en 2000 les Nations Unies s'est engagé à huit objectifs de développement du Millénaire ambitieux pour réduire la pauvreté mondiale d'ici à 2015. Pourquoi l'aide a atteint si peu ? Dons se sont souvent retrouvés dans les comptes bancaires offshore, des politiciens corrompus et des fonctionnaires dans les pays pauvres. L'argent a souvent été donnée sans condition, alors que la plupart de ces « » aide liée est consacré à com¬panies et des politiciens corrompus et des fonctionnaires dans le pays donateur. Guerre a ravagé de nombreux projets d'aide potentiellement bénéfiques. De plus, certaines aides a été motivée par des objectifs politiques – par exemple, l'étayage des gouvernements anti-communistes – plutôt qu'économiques. La leçon de l'histoire, c'est que l'aide sera souvent gaspillé à moins qu'il est soigneusement destiné aux pays par un véritable engagement pour une gestion économique saine. Analyse de la Banque mondiale tri 56 pays bénéficiaires de l'aide par la qualité de leur gestion économique. Ceux qui ont de bonnes politiques (faible inflation, un excédent budgétaire et l'ouverture au commerce) et de bonnes institutions (peu la corruption, la règle stricte du droit, une bureaucratie efficace) ont bénéficié de l'aide qu'ils ont reçu. Ceux avec les institutions et les politiques de pauvres n'ont pas. Ceci explique la popularité croissante de conditionnalité à l'aide.
Industry:Economy
Interest is usually expressed at an annual rate: the amount of interest that would be paid during a year divided by the amount of money loaned. Developed economies offer many different interest rates, reflecting the length of the loan and the riskiness and wealth of the borrower. People often use the term “interest rate” when they mean the short-term interest rate charged to banks. For instance, when a central bank raises or cuts interest rates, it changes only the price it charges to banks borrowing money overnight, expressed as an annual rate. Bond yields are a better measure of the interest rate on loans that do not have to be repaid for many years. Unlike short-term interest rates, bond yields are determined not by central bankers but by the supply and demand for money, which is heavily influenced by the expected rate of inflation.
Industry:Economy
Choses précieuses, même si vous ne pouvez pas les déposer sur votre pied – une idée, disent, en particulier un protégé par un brevet ; une culture d'entreprise efficace ; capital humain ; une marque populaire. Contraste avec des immobilisations corporelles.
Industry:Economy
Sur le plan économique, quoi que ce soit utilisé pour réduire l'inconvénient du risque. Dans sa forme la plus familière, l'assurance est fournie par une police souscrite auprès d'une compagnie d'assurance. Mais une définition plus complète comprendrait aussi, dire, une garantie financière (ou autre chose) utilisé pour haie, mais aussi une assistance disponible en cas de catastrophe. Il pourrait même être fourni par le gouvernement, de diverses manières, y compris les prestations d'aide sociale aux personnes malades ou pauvres et de la protection juridique contre les créanciers en cas de faillite. Les œuvres d'assurance conventionnelles en mettant en commun les risques de nombreuses personnes (ou entreprises et ainsi de suite), qui pourrait réclamer, mais dans la pratique peu effectivement le faire. Le coût de l'assistance à ceux qui prétendent est réparti entre tous les prestataires potentiels, ce qui rend l'assurance abordable pour tous. Malgré l'énorme attrait d'assurance, des marchés privés en assurance souvent fonctionnent mal ou pas du tout. Les économistes ont identifié trois principales raisons pour cela. * Entreprises privées ne sont pas prêts à fournir une assurance si ils sont incertains sur le coût probable d'une couverture suffisante, surtout si elle est potentiellement illimitée. * l'aléa moral signifie que les gens avec assurance peuvent prendre davantage de risques parce qu'ils savent qu'ils sont protégés, afin que l'assureur peut obtenir un plus grand projet de loi qu'il avait négocié. * Les assureurs courent un risque de sélection adverse. Les gens qui sont plus susceptibles de prétendre achètent une assurances, et ceux qui sont moins susceptibles de prétendre ne pas l'acheter. Dans cette situation, la fixation d'un prix d'assurance qui génère suffisamment primes pour couvrir toutes les revendications est difficile, voire impossible. Les assureurs ont trouvé des façons de réduire l'impact de ces problèmes. Par exemple, pour la sélection adverse de compteur, ils ont mis des taux plus élevés d'assurance maladie pour les personnes qui fument. Pour limiter l'aléa moral, ils offrent des primes réduites pour les personnes qui acceptent de payer la première sorte-plusieurs dollars ou en livres de toute revendication. Un système efficace d'assurance, au sens large, peut contribuer à la croissance économique, en encourageant la prise de risque entrepreneurial et en permettant aux gens de choisir quels risques qu'ils prennent et qu'elles gardent eux-mêmes contre.
Industry:Economy
Un club basé à Paris pour les pays industrialisés et le meilleur du reste. Elle a été créée en 1961, s'appuyant sur l'Organisation pour European Economic Co-operation (OECE), qui avaient été instituées en vertu du plan Marshall. En 2003, son adhésion était ressuscité dans 30 pays, un original 20. Ensemble, les pays de l'OCDE produisent les deux-tiers de biens et de services du monde. L'OCDE prévoit une politique parler boutique pour les gouvernements. Il produit des forêts-valeur de documents, discuter des idées de politiques publiques, ainsi que des analyses empiriques détaillées. Il publie également des rapports sur la performance économique de chaque pays, ce qui généralement contiennent beaucoup de renseignements utiles même si elles sont rarement très critiques des politiques mises en œuvre par un gouvernement membre.
Industry:Economy
Rising prices, across the board. Inflation means less bang for your buck, as it erodes the purchasing power of a unit of currency. Inflation usually refers to consumer prices, but it can also be applied to other prices (wholesale goods, wages, assets, and so on). It is usually expressed as an annual percentage rate of change on an index number. For much of human history inflation has not been an important part of economic life. Before 1930, prices were as likely to fall as rise during any given year, and in the long run these ups and downs usually cancelled each other out. By contrast, by the end of the 20th century, 60-year-old Americans had seen prices rise by over 1,000% during their lifetime. The most spectacular period of inflation in industrialized countries took place during the 1970s, partly as a result of sharp increases in oil prices implemented by the OPEC cartel. Although these countries have mostly regained control over inflation since the 1980s, it continued to be a source of serious problems in many developing countries. Inflation would not do much damage if it were predictable, as everybody could build into their decision making the prospect of higher prices in future. In practice, it is unpredictable, which means that people are often surprised by price increases. This reduces economic efficiency, not least because people take fewer risks to minimize the chances of suffering too severely from a price shock. The faster the rate of inflation, the harder it is to predict future inflation. Indeed, this uncertainty can cause people to lose confidence in a currency as a store of value. This is why hyper-inflation is so damaging. Most economists agree that an economy is most likely to function efficiently if inflation is low. Ideally, macroeconomic policy should aim for stable prices. Some economists argue that a low level of inflation can be a good thing, however, if it is a result of innovation. New products are launched at high prices, which quickly come down through competition. Most economists reckon that deflation (falling average prices) is best avoided. To keep inflation low you need to know what causes it. Economists have plenty of theories but no absolutely cast-iron conclusions. Inflation, Milton Friedman once said, “is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. Monetarists reckon that to stabilize prices the rate of growth of the money supply needs to be carefully controlled. However, implementing this has proven difficult, as the relationship between measures of the money supply identified by monetarists and the rate of inflation has typically broken down as soon as policymakers have tried to target it. Keynesian economists believe that inflation can occur independently of monetary conditions. Other economists focus on the importance of institutional factors, such as whether the interest rate is set by politicians or (preferably) by an independent central bank, and whether that central bank is set an inflation target. Is there a relationship between inflation and the level of unemployment? In the 1950s, the Phillips curve seemed to indicate that policymakers could trade off higher inflation for lower unemployment. Later experience suggested that although inflating the economy could lower unemployment in the short run, in the long run you ended up with unemployment at least as high as before and rising inflation as well. Economists then came up with the idea of the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment), the rate of unemployment below which inflation would start to accelerate. However, in the late 1990s, in both the United States and the UK, the unemployment rate fell well below what most economists thought was the NAIRU yet inflation did not pick up. This caused some economists to argue that technological and other changes wrought by the new economy meant that inflation was dead. Traditionalists said it was merely resting.
Industry:Economy
Taxes qui ne viennent pas tout droit sorti de paquet de salaire d'une personne ou actifs, ou sur les bénéfices de l'entreprise. Par exemple, une taxe à la consommation, tels que de la taxe à valeur ajoutée (voir impôt de dépenses). Contrastent avec les impôts directs, tels que l'impôt sur le revenu. Fiscalité indirecte est devenu plus en plus populaire auprès des hommes politiques, car il peut être moins sensible aux gens de payer de l'impôt sur le revenu et est plus difficile d'éviter de payer.
Industry:Economy
Keeping pace with inflation. In many countries, wages, pensions, unemployment benefits and some other sorts of income are automatically raised according to recent movements in the consumer price index. This allows these different sorts of income to retain their value in real terms.
Industry:Economy
There are few more hotly debated topics in economics than what role the state should play in the economy. Plenty of economists provided intellectual support for state intervention during the era of big government, particularly from the 1930s to the 1980s. Keynesians argued that the state should manage the amount of demand in the economy to maintain full employment. Others advocated a command economy, in which the government would decide price levels, oversee the allocation of scarce resources and run the most important parts of the economy (the "commanding heights") or, in communist countries, the entire economy. The role of the state increased at the expense of market forces. Economists provided plenty of examples of market failure that seemed to justify this. Since the 1950s, there has been growing evidence that government intervention can also be flawed, and can often impose even greater costs on an economy than market failure. One reason is that when a government acts, it usually does so as a monopoly, with all the attendant economic inefficiencies this implies. In practice, policies of Keynesian demand management often resulted in inflation, and thus lost much of their credibility. There was growing concern that public investment was crowding out superior private investment, and that other public spending on things such as health care, education and pensions was similarly discouraging private provision. Government management of commercial enterprises was often seen to be inefficient and, starting in the 1980s, nationalization gave way to privatization. Even when the state was not directly responsible for economic activity, but instead set the rules governing private behavior, there was evidence of regulatory failure. High rates of taxation started to discourage people and companies from undertaking economic activities that would, without the tax, have been profitable; wealth creation suffered. Most economists agree that there is a need for some government role in the economy. A market economy can function only if there is an adequate legal system, and, in particular, clearly defined, enforceable property rights. The legal system is probably an example of what economists call a public good (although the existence in many countries and industries of some self-regulation shows it is not always so). Although politicians in many countries spent most of the period since 1980 talking about the need to reduce the role of the state in the economy, and in many cases introduced policies of privatization, deregulation and liberalization to help this happen, public spending has continued to increase as a share of GDP. Within the OECD, public spending accounted for a larger slice of GDP in 2002 than in 1990, which was in turn higher than in 1980. Indeed, it has risen during every decade since the start of the 20th century. One reason was that governments had to honor spending commitments on pensions and health care made by previous generations of politicians.
Industry:Economy
