Achieving the MDGs – A Note

Naill Kishtany and Alemayehu Taffesse

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The material and symbolic importance of these targets make it vital to assess the analytical coherence of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) “project”. In this spirit, this paper highlights complexities and difficulties of the MDG approach. Specifically, it outlines a framework for analysing the MDGs and subsequently discusses measuring progress; achieving and valuing multi-dimensional outcomes; sustainability; devising policies during structural transformation; and implementing policies in a decentralised policy system. These discussions draw attention to limitations of current methods of analysing the MDGs. Indeed, the history of today’s rich countries shows that development is a drawn out, uneven and contradictory process full of reversals and discontinuity. The MDGs, with their ambitious, linear, broad, and essentially ahistorical set of socio-economic goals belie this complexity; contemporary developed countries measured yesterday with today’s MDG yardstick might well have been branded “failures”.

Keywords: Millennium Development Goals(MDGs); development policy; Tinbergen’s rule; structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E61 O1 O2 O21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-12
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Published in Ethiopian Journal of Economics 1.18(2009): pp. 101-116

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Journal Article: Achieving The MDGs – a Note (2009)
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