Group items tagged

"The World Economics Association (WEA) was launched on May 16, 2011. It fills a gap in the international community of economists -- the absence of a professional organization which is truly international and pluralist. The American Economic Association and other nationally based organizations provide broad associations mainly for their country's economists. The WEA will do the same for the world's community of economists, while promoting a pluralism of approaches to economic analysis."

Building infrastructure does not produce economic growth unless there is already a skilled workforce and an expanding private sector to exploit it. Job creation schemes are expensive, require continuing support and tend to divert jobs from elsewhere rather than create new ones. Worse than the waste, these regional economic development programs can prevent money from going where it is both needed and able to contribute to economic growth - in Australia's fast-growing or `bolting' regions.

"At the Cold War's end, some pundits proclaimed that "geo-economics" had replaced geopolitics. Economic power would become the key to success in world politics, a change that many people thought would usher in a world dominated by Japan and Germany."

BEIJING: The first India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) being held here has achieved positive results, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said.

'Futures' (images of the future) are often devised at the level of a single university or at a national level for the overall higher education system. However, the bulk of trends and driving forces shaping universities' future are international in their nature and universities operate in broader socio-economic and S&T systems. Hence, futures devised in a multi-level structure would better assist decision-makers and stakeholders. This approach is a demanding one in several respects, but offers significant advantages: (i) the potential changes in the social, economic and S&T systems, in which universities are embedded, as well as their impacts on higher education can be considered systematically; (ii) the substantial diversity of higher education systems and individual universities can be taken into account; and (iii) the likely impacts of various policy options can also be analysed.

ONE of humanity's ultimate dreams, to peer into the future, may be moving a step closer with a controversial €1 billion ($1.3bn) EU plan to recreate the entire world in a computer system. The Living Earth Simulator project would take the vast streams of data pouring into the internet, ranging from Facebook and Twitter to dry-as-dust government statistics, and try to spot the economic and social trends that will shape the future.

"Presenting on the heels of Canada, which argued that it is difficult to achieve emissions reductions while continuing on a path of economic growth, the EU stated that, in fact, its own GDP has grown, by 40%+ percent between 1990-2009, while its emissions have been reduced by 16%. "So it is possible," said the EU's lead climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger, "to de-couple economic growth from increased emissions.""

"Business-as-usual in the financial sector is blowing up a bubble even bigger than the real estate bubble which burst in the 1930s. "

"Great expectations and a virtual world are among the megatrends changing the role of museums and arts organisations. The megatrends, identified by CSIRO trend analyst Stefan Hajkowicz, are a major shift in the cultural, economic, social, environmental and technological milieu that are expected to radically change the context of everything we do over the next 20 years. Some of the trends go to the very nature of why people come to museums, raising the possibility that museums, galleries and theatres could replace shops as the 'third place' where people congregate. Others will change the processes by which our organisations operate and the subjects on which we focus. Speaking at the Musuems Australia National Conference in Canberra on Shaping the Future of Museums, Dr Hajkowicz said while some changes were 'black swans' - phenomena never seen until a major change of environment - many were more like a 'kangaroo in the headlights', who sees the car coming but remains frozen. He gave the example of Eastman Kodak, which was involved in the development of the digital camera in 1975 but failed to change its business model from dependence on film and filed for bankruptcy in 2011."

The Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks through partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups and is committed to maximizing the potentials of innovative open technologies by studying their social and economic impacts - particularly for poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies. OTI provides in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings for policy decision-makers and the general public. More Info

In partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation and its Searchlight Partners around the world, people from all walks of life will play to catalyze change in the global landscape of poverty. From development professionals to local community leaders to citizens of change, we will gather the voices of people working on the ground to reimagine the future of development and economic well-being.

" Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, will lead a meeting in Oxford today of international business, government and other leaders to address the gridlock in international and national attempts to deal with key global problems. The meeting launches the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations. The Commission seeks to address the growing short-term preoccupations of modern politics and identify ways to overcome today's impasse in key economic, climate, trade, security and other negotiations."

"The year is 2020 and the unthinkable has happened: The United States, Russia and several of their neighbors have announced a union called Polario, based on their proximity to the North Pole. Economic, security and shared threats have forced the hands of the two leaders of this new union and former Cold War rivals. Their alliance in a union appears to be the only way to solve their problems."

Will Asia lead the world in green technologies and in the political-economic transition to sustainability? Can Asia bury past conflicts and create stronger regional institutions including perhaps, step by step, an Asian Union? In what ways could Asia's traditional cultures - Islamic, Tantric, Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist and Vedic - be resources in inventing an alternative more hybrid cultures?

International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system. The central purpose of IFs is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios. The model is integrated with a large database containing values for its many foundational data series since 1960. Through this web site IFs is freely available to users both on-line and in downloadable form.

Despite an uncertain global economy and a continually shifting regulatory environment, the top teams at the world's leading banks are starting to plot paths toward growth. With no proven economic model to point to, bankers are attempting to understand the many possible futures they could confront over the next decade. In the industry's first-ever interactive eBook published by Ernst & Young and Knowledge@Wharton, "Global Banking 2020: Foresight & Insights," banking leaders explore a spectrum of potential scenarios - including some extreme possibilities - that could develop in the coming decade, along with strategies to help global banks thrive.

What will international science be like in 20 years? Speakers in this session organised by International Council for Science (ICSU) tried to depict the future, basing their predictions on the strategic plan of the ICSU for 2012-2017, and many foreseeable economic, social, political and environmental events.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) has announced the results of its Pro-Poor Scenarios Competition, a global contest that invited policymakers, futurists, academics and active citizens around the world to develop scenarios that apply foresight methods to expand social and economic opportunities for poor and marginalized populations.

The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) has announced the results of its Pro-Poor Scenarios Competition, a global contest that invited policy‐makers, futurists, academics and active citizens around the world to develop scenarios that apply foresight methods to expand social and economic opportunities for poor and marginalized populations.

Because of the hectic pace of China's economic and social development, Chinese energy demand will continue to grow rapidly in next 40 years. Beijing appears determined to pursue a low-carbon development strategy, and wind energy is going to be one of the main resources for achieving China's low carbon goals.