By iMFdirect
Author and innovation guru, Alec Ross says that technology is shaping the industries of the future.
“Ninety percent of the world’s data has been produced in the last two years. In fact, if you take the sum of all the information produced by human kind—from paintings on cave walls—to the year 2003, the sum of that data we now produce every two days.” Continue reading “Have Data—Will Travel” »
by iMFdirect
New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman says our lives are being transformed in so many realms at once—it’s dizzying.
“We’re in the middle of 3 accelerations; the market, mother nature, and Moore’s law. Moore’s law says the power of microchips will double every 24 months, mother nature is climate change, biodiversity loss and population, and the market is digital globalization.” Continue reading “The Dizzy Pace of Change: Thomas Friedman Has a Recipe to Thrive” »
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region suffers significant shortcoming in data, which are particularly problematic at a time economic transition. There are important data gaps, poor data quality and in many cases, internationally agreed standards of statistical methodologies, compilation periodicity and timeliness, and data dissemination practices are not followed.
The growth versus austerity debate is detracting attention from policy issues that may seem less urgent, but which are nevertheless critical in the medium term. I am referring to what I would call the institutional gaps in fiscal policymaking that still exist in most advanced and emerging economies. These gaps have contributed to a bias in the conduct of fiscal policy in favor of deficits that is behind many of the current problems.