Note to Correspondents

New UN study on financing of Millennium Development Goals

 

to be launched at event on Monday, 15 November

 

A United Nations study on “New Sources of Development Finance:  Funding the Millennium Development Goals” is to be presented and launched next Monday, 15 November.

United Nations media and staff, and members of Permanent Missions and non-governmental organizations, are invited to the event, to be held from 3 to 5 p.m. in the auditorium of the Permanent Mission of Germany (on 49^th street and First Avenue).

The study was undertaken by the New York Office of the UnitedNationsUniversity (UNU), the UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research, and the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs, at the behest of the General Assembly.

This new study examines innovative ways in which resources can be mobilized for economic development, so as to secure the doubling of flows required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.  It sets out a framework for the economic analysis of different sources, applying the tools of modern public economics and considers the underlying political economy.

It examines, in turn, a series of new and controversial proposals.  The seven potential options include:  global environmental taxes, a global lottery and global premium bond, a tax on currency flows, the creation of new Special Drawing Rights, an international finance facility, greater private donations for development by firms and individuals, and facilitating the means for emigrants to send their money home.

The study will be presented by A.B. Atkinson, Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, previously Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge and at the London School of Economics.  The event will be chaired by José Antonio Ocampo, Under-Secretary-General for UN Economic and Social Affairs; and Tony Shorrocks, Director of the UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research.

Further information, including the agenda and registration, is available online at http://www.ony.unu.edu, or by contacting the New York office at tel: (212) 963-6387, or e-mail: nassim@ony.unu.edu.

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