Indonesia has long aspired to become an upper-middle income economy and is now seeking ways to kickstart growth. The government is particularly interested in the role of the manufacturing sector and how to diversify and upgrade industry — which, in parallel, means reviewing industrial, fiscal and monetary policies in support of higher growth rates. Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) worked with the Asian Development Bank and a range of international expe...
Darwin identified at least two triggers of evolution: either shocks that hit a system from the outside or ‘mutant’ shocks that sprout up from within a system. The Gaja cyclone that hit the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu state in India on Friday 16 November 2018 is a typical example of the former, while the human cylone, wearing bright yellow vests, or the gilets jaunes, which stormed out on the streets of Paris and elsewhere in France on Saturday November 17 can be considered the latter. Though wor...
A new report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) provides updated evidence on the trends of internal migration within Mongolia. UNU-MERIT researcher Dr. Craig Loschmann contributed to the study by assisting the Population Training and Research Centre (PTRC) of the National University of Mongolia with data analysis and in writing the report. The descriptive analysis is based on extensive quantitative and qualitative data collection with internal migrant and non-migrant househo...
For over a decade, we’ve been training Asian professionals on the latest developments in social protection. Led by the Universities of Heidelberg, Germany and Hanoi, Vietnam, the International Social Protection Studies Programme also has a Maastricht-based module: covering policy management, monitoring and evaluation. Every other year since 2007, a group of participants has joined us in Maastricht for around 5-6 weeks. A few years ago, discussions began on how to transform the course into a full...
These days when asked where I am from, I usually say Hawai’i. Honolulu. It is the simplest answer and the one that is most rarely followed by that dreaded question – ‘but where are you really from?’ – that regularly comes when I say the United States. It is not so much that I find this question offensive, though I understand why many do. It is more that I find it tiring, requiring longer explanations and clarifications than I usually want to give someone I have just met – someone who has just ki...
On Thursday 23 November, you will defend your PhD dissertation “Prioritizing the HIV Response: A multi-criteria decision analysis”. Can you briefly describe what your study is about? / Nearly 35 years since the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, the political and financial momentum that saw rapid progress in increasing treatment coverage and reductions of new infections is showing signs of slowing down. The reduction in donor funding for HIV response in transition economies like Viet Nam, ...