News
Update: August 2011
IFs model update: Strengthening the representation of infrastructure
For the upcoming 4th volume in the Pardee Center’s Patterns of Potential Human Progress series, the IFs team is greatly expanding and improving our modeling of infrastructure. The separate costs of infrastructure maintenance and new construction (broken out by public and private contributions) for the 183 countries in IFs are being represented across four categories: transportation, water/sanitation, energy, and ICT. Each of these infrastructure categories will be further represented by various sub-measures of stocks and access. The costs of infrastructure maintenance and new construction are linked to the government finance model, and the relative level of overall infrastructure now links endogenously back to human development through the model’s production function. The newest version of the model (version 6.47) incorporates most of these changes. Others are still being tested and will be available in the next version of the model available later this fall.
African Futures Quarterly Policy Brief released: Taps and Toilets
The IFs team and the Institute for Security Studies, our African partner, have produced the first of what will be regular quarterly African Futures policy briefs. This first brief focuses on an aggressive but reasonable scenario for improving access to safe water and sanitation across the continent. It finds that the return on investment in these resources is large, with spill-over effects reducing infant mortality, malnutrition, and poverty, and mitigating the probability of state failure. The brief is the combined work of four advanced students at the Korbel School and a staff member at the ISS. Look in November for the next African Futures quarterly policy brief, focusing on an aggressive but reasonable scenario for access to primary and secondary education.
Pardee Center meets World Bank Development Prospects Group
Barry Hughes and Jonathan Moyer attended a day-long workshop with representatives from the World Bank’s Development Prospects Group at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. Among other things, the Development Prospects Group is responsible for issuing the Bank’s outlook on the global economy through semi-annual Global Economic Prospects reports. The meeting provided an opportunity for the two groups to become more familiar with each other’s work and ended with discussion of possible collaborations.
Pardee Center hires new RAs
The Pardee Center for International Futures is pleased to introduce four new Research Assistants: Tinuviel Lathrop, Hanna Camp, Kate McGrath, and Carey Neill. All four are incoming graduate students at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.