[bestbits] Outcome of cyberspace conference in Seoul

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Never, ever trust the IMF :)

--c.a.

On 10/08/2013 05:19 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> michael gurstein [2013-10-08 10:47]:
>> Pranesh,
>>
>> You are providing a very peculiar list of "developing" countries--"Chile,
>> Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Mexico, Poland, Senegal, Turkey".
> 
> The IMF lists 156[1] developing countries,[2] and 21 developed
> countries, and that's the list I used.  As per the IMF, all 10 of the
> above are EMDEs.
> 
> On the other hand, the World Bank classification[3] lists 139 as
> developing countries, and the above countries break-down as:
> 
> Lower-middle-income economies:
> Egypt
> India
> Indonesia
> Senegal
> 
> Upper-middle-income economies:
> Hungary
> Mexico
> Turkey
> 
> High-income economies:
> Chile (OECD member)
> Latvia
> Poland (OECD member)
> 
> The World Bank considers all low- and middle-income economies to be
> "developing".  So that would cut down the list of 10 countries to 7.
> 
> Cheers,
> Pranesh
> 
>  [1]: These are the 21 countries that are "Advanced Economies" (as
> opposed to "Emerging Market and Developing Economies") and are not
> considered developing countries by the IMF: Australia, Austria, Belgium,
> Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,
> Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
> Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
>  [2]: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/text.pdf
>  [2]:
> http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups
> 
>> By my, and I believe most reckonings there are 3 actual DC's in your list
>> (from some 130?? or so)--India, Indonesia, and Senegal--hardly a sufficient
>> number to be drawing any useful conclusions from.
> 
> I'm sorry if it came across that way, but I don't mean to draw crude
> 'useful conclusions' as to what developing countries want and don't
> want.  (I hardly want to draw conclusions, for that matter, useful or
> otherwise.)  I'm just wondering aloud what practical differences would
> be between the IG policy stances of developing countries and developed
> countries.  I'm looking for hypotheses, not conclusions.
> 
> Would you hypothesise that developing countries would be more
> left-leaning than developed countries, and more prone to state
> intervention in lieu of market mechanisms?  And if so, would any of them
> do so by actually negating all market-related terminology in the
> principles or by using caveats along the lines of "while we would
> ideally like to allow markets, in those cases where markets can't or
> don't deliver the universal access at the low costs that we desire, we
> as states will have to step in".  If it is the latter, I wonder which
> developed country would oppose that language, since language similar to
> that already exists in the OECD+ Seoul Declaration of 2008.
> 
> This is a thought experiment I'd like to garner responses from and
> learn.  Because I really don't know much about this, and have done far
> less work around these issues than you (Michael), APC, IT for Change,
> LIRNEAsia, Consumers International, and so many other groups that work
> on these issues.
> 
> Cheers,
> Pranesh
>