GENDER & DEVELOPMENT - This article draws on the grassroots experiences and research of MAP Foundation to examine the gendered impacts of the economic downturn on migrants from Burma/Myanmar who are working in Thailand.

GENDER & DEVELOPMENT - This paper sets out a framework for thinking about the gender dimensions of the economic crisis. It considers the likely impact of the crisis, as well as the responses to it, on the part of both individuals and collectivities, in three spheres of the economy: finance; production; and reproduction.

LEVY INSTITUTE - Massive job losses in the United States, over eight million since the onset of the “Great Recession,” call for job creation measures through fiscal expansion. This paper analyze the job creation potential of social service–delivery sectors—early childhood development and home-based health care—as compared to other proposed alternatives in infrastructure construction and energy.

OXFAM - With support from Oxfam GB and the World Bank, researchers carried out rapid qualitative assessment of the short-term social impacts of the global economic crisis on businesses and workers in different sectors in Ha Noi: craft villages, industrial workers, and the mobile labour market.The goal was to inform government understanding and policy during the economic crisis following the initial stimulus package.

OXFAM - This report examines the impact of the global financial crisis on the budgets of low-income countries, especially their spending to reach the Millennium Development Goals. The crisis created a huge budget revenue hole of $65bn, of which aid has filled only one-third.

CEPR - A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows that Spain, under pressure to cut spending and raise taxes while its economy is barely recovering, might be better off with a continued stimulus.

GENDER ACTION - Gender blind International Financial Institution (IFI) investments can have negative impacts on indigenous communities, especially when IFIs are financiers of environmentally destructive infrastructure projects, extractive industries, and harmful macroeconomic restructuring.

GENDER & DEVELOPMENT - This paper analyzes the impact of the global economic crisis on the lives of poor women, men and children living in developing countries, through the lens of gender analysis.

ODI - This paper shows that growth is important for the MDGs, but economic growth matters for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, but how growth is distributed is key. Specific policies are needed to ensure that poor people can participate in, and benefit from, economic growth. Such policies should increase the assets of the poor and tackle inequalities in markets.

COC - Contemporary crises in finance, the economy, care, hunger, migration, energy and climate change are the interrelated signs revealing the failure of the dominant Neoliberal approach to development over the last 3 decades. This paper analyzes the roots of these crises and lays out a vision of a way forward that promises healing, renewal and greater justice for all peoples and Earth.

NETWORK IDEAS - This paper argues for re-regulating the financial sector with a view to preventing system-wide failures and fulfilling development needs. It highlights the importance of segregating different parts of the financial sector as well as controls over both deposit and lending rates, and the role of government-owned banks, especially for agriculture and SMEs.

UE - Candidate and potential candidate countries demonstrated a high degree of initial resilience to the global economic crisis, even though they had appeared ex ante more vulnerable than the new EU Member States, in view of their large external deficits prior to 2008 and hence their reliance on foreign capital to finance their growth.

LEVY INSTITUTE - Regulatory forbearance and government financial during the crisis of 2007–09 highlighted a "too big to fail" problem. Structural solution is necessary. Breakups through divestiture, perhaps encompassing specific lines of activity, would distribute the "public interest" among a larger group of companies than the handful that currently hold a disproportionate and growing concentration of financial resources.

OXFAM - Behind the official statistics, farmers, manufacturing workers, migrant workers, waste-pickers, and women working unpaid in the home all over the world are asking the same question: ‘What hit us in 2009?’. Oxfam’s research on the global economic crisis in 12 countries, involving some 2,500 individuals, is combined in this report with the findings of studies by a range of universities, think tanks, and international organizations.

CEPR - Dean Baker, defends the benefits of Financial Transaction Taxes (FTT). He argues that they can raise substantial revenue while at same time improve the operation of financial markets. Many of the world’s most prominent economists have endorsed FTTs; and there is a great deal of interest in and political support for financial transactions taxes among political figures and civil society organizations.

DUTCH NEWS - The financial sector in the Netherlands 'took unacceptable risks, and lost sight of the public interest,' the leader of a parliamentary inquiry into the economic crisis told reporters on Monday. Full Parliamentary report available to download.

ILO - The global financial and economic crisis has brought with it significant employment and social challenges, particularly for migrant workers from developing countries. As a new ILO study on North and West Africa shows, the latter tend to be disproportionately affected by job losses in destination countries, with the flow of remittances to their countries of origin suffering a major decline.

FAO - Climate change can significantly reverse the progress towards poverty reduction and food security in Africa, according to a paper presented to the FAO regional Conference for Africa being held in Luanda, Angola this week. The main consequence of higher temperatures and more unpredictable weather was a likely reduction in crop yields – 6.9 percent in the case of maize, an important staple – and a heightened risk of food insecurity.

SOMO - These past few months, a Commission proposal aiming to regulate hedge funds and private equity funds was heavily debated by the Ministers of Finance and the European Parliament. These funds are important players in casino-style financial markets and off-shore financial industry. Their short-term and sometimes aggressive investment and speculative strategies are now recognised by the EU to have contributed to the instability of financial markets. But so far, they have remained largely unregulated.

SOCIETY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT - While the last 15 years have witnessed the fulfilment, in some countries, for some women, of some of the provisions of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), it has been in a context of widening inequality, between countries, between social classes, between women.