The Financial Crisis and its Impact on Developing Countries
UNDP working paper - Working Paper #186
This working paper has been commissioned by the Poverty Group, Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP, to identify the transmission mechanisms of the financial crisis from developed to developing countries and to provide broad policy recommendations at the national, global and regional level. The paper identifies three mechanisms that play a key role in spreading the consequences of the financial crisis to the developing world: remittances, capital flows and trade. The policy responses take Millenium Development Goals achievement and poverty reduction as the central policy concerns. The paper indicates that a fair number of countries have policy space to protect vulnerable groups in the short run as well as to undertake investments to build resilience and reach these goals in the longer term. Other countries will need additional development assistance to protect development achievements. The authors point to a number of factors that need to be taken into account in determining what mix of policies to deploy including the macroeconomic, fiscal and policy stance of countries and their dynamics. The paper also proposes far-reaching reforms to address the global financial crisis, which would help to put the global macroeconomic, fiscal and financial coordination mechanisms on a firmer footing.
About the Authors
José Antonio Ocampo
Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University and former Minister of Finance of Colombia
Columbia University
Jose Antonio Ocampo is a Professor of Professional Practice in the School of International and Public Affairs and former Minister of Finance of Colombia. He is also a Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Prior to his appointment at Columbia, Professor Ocampo served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and head of UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and has held a number of high-level posts in the Government of Colombia, including Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Director of the National Planning Department, and Minister of Agriculture . Professor Ocampo is author or editor of over 30 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.
Stephany Griffith-Jones
Financial Markets Program Director
Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
Stephany Griffith-Jones is an economist specialising in international finance and development, with emphasis on reform of the international and national financial system, especially in relation to financial regulation and global governance. She is Financial Markets Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University. Previously she was Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. She was Director of International Finance at the Commonwealth Secretariat and worked at UN DESA and ECLAC. She was senior consultant to governments in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa and many international agencies, including the World Bank, the IADB, the European Commission, UNDP and UNCTAD. She was a member of the Warwick Commission on financial regulation. She currently is theme leader on finance in the ESRC /DFID growth programme for LICs, especially African ones. She has published over 20 books and many scholarly and journalistic articles. Her books include Time for the Visible Hand, Lessons from the 2008 crisis, edited jointly with José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph Stiglitz.
Publication Information
| Type | Working Paper |
| Program | Financial Markets Reform |
| Posted | 01/18/09 |
| Download | 508kb pdf |
| # Pages | 25 |