Economics Assignment

PART I

1. Assume the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) hired you as an economic development expert. Your mission is to travel to several developing countries (Mexico, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, and Lebanon), which have been suffering from the "brain drain" disease for more than four decades. Every year, millions of college graduates and highly educated and skilled professionals leave their countries to seek permanent residency and citizenship in Australia, Canada, United States, Western Europe, and whichever country taking them.

Your assignment is threefold:

a) To analyze the economic, social, cultural (including religious), and political reasons why educated and skilled professionals leave their countries

b) To determine who is gaining and who is losing from such an unprecedented mass exodus (i.e., the immigrant, the immigrant's family, the home country, and the host country)

c) To develop a set of policy measures that could help reduce human capital flight and encourage return of the expatriates

2. Assume the United Nations hired you as a development economist. Your assignment is to travel to several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (e.g., Libya, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia), which have allocated billions of dollars over the past three decades to military expansion and modernization. Yet, they have not been able to offer economic prosperity and political freedom to their own people.

Your assignment is threefold:

a) To discuss the positive and negative effects of military spending in developing countries

b) To explore why these countries feel obliged to build large and modern armed forces

c) To propose an alternative approach to governance that will bring about prosperity and freedom to such deprived people

Instructions:

Write a detailed essay of about 500 words to answer each question based on textbook reading. Write the beginning and ending page numbers of the textbook at the outset of your answer. Do not re-write the questions. Answer all components of each question. Support your answers with graphs and data tables from the textbook (wherever necessary) to receive full credit.

Part ii

1. What do we mean by "environmentally sustainable development?" Are there serious economic costs of pursuing sustainable development as opposed to usual economic growth? Who bears the major responsibility for global environmental damages - the rich of the MDCs or the poor in the LDCs?

2. Should the LDCs promote exports of primary products such as agricultural and mineral commodities, or should they attempt to industrialize by establishing their own heavy manufacturing industries as rapidly as possible?

3. How did the LDCs get into such serious external debt problems? What are the economic development consequences of mounting external debt?

4. What are the economic, social, and political impacts of the IMF "stabilization policy" and the World Bank "structural adjustment" on the balance of payments and economic growth of the heavily indebted LDCs?

Instructions:

For each question, write a detailed essay of about 300 words to answer each question based on textbook reading. Write the beginning and ending page numbers of the textbook at the outset of your answer. Do not re-write the questions. Answer all components of each question.

Support your answers with graphs and data tables from the textbook (wherever necessary) to receive full credit.