Resume of the course

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ECD MEGA RIASSUNTO DEVELOPMENT HISTORY OF COOPERATION - 1945: Organization of the United Nation (ONU) - 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights + Marshall plan - from 1960: cooperation became more important - 1987: the ONU report “our common future” presented the idea of sustainable development. Sustainable both on an environmental and temporal dimension. - 1990: UNDP (United Nation Development Program) presents the Human Development Index (HDI) that includes economic dimension, level of education and health. - 2000: UN, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and OECD launch the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved in 2015 (Agenda 2015). ECONOMIC FACTOR- PARADOXES - Inequalities paradox: the purpose of economy is the growth of global wealth, but it leads to the increase in inequality. - Resources paradox: there are enough resources for everyone, in fact poverty is a problem of bad distribution of resources, not a problem of lack of them. - Happiness paradox: it is demonstrated that the shape of the happiness -income curve has a maximum. After a certain threshold the happiness starts to decrease with the incomes. 4 PARADIGMS OF DEVELOPMENT - Financial push paradigm (50’s-60’s): the only barrier to development is the lack of money. This paradigm takes as example the Marshal Plan. The proposed solution is to borrow enough money to the developing countries so that their economy could take off Paradox of Money: 1. GDP increases but also inequalities (see Gini index) 2. Is not a problem of quantity of resources in total, it's a problem of bad distribution 3. Countries with the highest GDP are not the happiest African governments’ capacities were not enough so this flow of money just increased the corruption. In the ‘80s central banks rose up the interest…