How to frame South-South Cooperation? Challenges of the upcoming 2nd UN Conference on South-South Cooperation

Photo: statue gomero de la recoleta

In 2015, world leaders set up the most ambitious agendas: the 2030 Agenda and the Paris agreement on climate change. These agendas included commitments to eradicate hunger, and to fight poverty and inequality, leaving no one behind. They also included voluntary obligations to reduce emissions and to adopt serious measures for mitigating and promoting adaptation to the impact of climate change.

The disputed status of developing countries in the WTO

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Currently, the US and China are fiercely discussing about the role of developing countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO). At the heart of the discussion is the question whether rising powers like China should benefit from special rights in the WTO. …

Trust in the Internet: The Economic Dimension of Cybersecurity

Image: Hacker CodeCybersecurity was a prime topic at this year’s Munich Security Conference. If, for instance, the cloud service provider AWS with its 42% market share was successfully attacked, it would take down large parts of the Internet, with impacts worse than kinetic warfare by some measures.

Overall economic losses from cyberattacks are estimated at 600bn $, or 1% of global GDP, with sharp growth rates as all parts of the economy are moving online. Still, these figures reflect just the tip of the iceberg. Many potentials for digital value creation cannot be realized due to lack of trust. Germans, for instance, feel queasy about online banking: Only half of Germans trust the security of digital transactions, stifling uptake of new fintech business models.

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Can we understand the prospects of development without understanding its environmental dimension?

Development studies aim to understand the root causes of poverty and its reproduction and how social inequalities emerge and are stabilized. This is a broad endeavour with a number of academic disciplines contributing, with quite a few success stories if we look at the economic and the social dimensions. However, while maintaining the focus on…

Global Innovation System Design: The G20 as a knowledge catalyst

Image: Newtons Craddle

The evolutionary approach highlights education and innovation as a central means of welfare and growth. The transformation of the productive sphere and the development of society are depended upon knowledge generation and learning. An effective innovation system, which enhances knowledge generation and learning through increasing the interaction among the actors, provides a favorable environment in this regard. That is valid at the global level as well.