 President Artisai, Excellencies, members of the Diplomatic Corps, colleagues from all around the world, including our webcasts and YouTube audience, members of the wider global research network, ladies and gentlemen. It is both an honour and a privilege, Earth Director of the wider Institute of the United Nations University to warmly welcome you all to the 17th wider annual lecture. Each year, an eminent scholar or policymaker who has made a significant contribution in the development field delivers this lecture, a key event in our calendar. This year, in collaboration with the Crisis Management Initiative, CMI, we are especially honoured to welcome or welcome back, if you wish, Nobel Prize winner, member of the Group of Elders and key player in the creation of wider President Artisai. Please do accept our most sincere thanks for accepting the invitation. Your address today has a very special importance to the UNU-Wider Global Network. We are a small institution, actually very small, in international comparison, especially compared to our U.S. counterparts, which have far larger financial resources. Nonetheless, over the last few years, we have managed to push this in wider, Earth's number six in a very competitive global ranking of international development think tanks. And in Europe, we are in the very top. You who played a critical role in setting up wider must share the credit, and we hope some of our pride in this achievement. We hope that you feel that we have managed to stick to the guiding principles you are responsible for laying out nearly three decades ago. We continue to strive to provide a wider perspective and thinking on development issues and the evolving challenges the global community is facing. President Artisai, I warmly welcome you. And I'm happy to introduce a greeting to you and the wider audience today by our fellow Nobel laureate, who will you, played such a critical role in creating wider and establishing the intellectual tradition on which wider continues to build. President Artisai, I give you Professor Seng. Well, it's a wonderful opportunity for me to greet President Marti Artisai, who is very privileged to have known and has as a friend and whose influence in the building up of wider, right from the early days when I was involved with wider, has been extraordinarily important, inspiring, and deeply influential. Of course, President Artisai's role in the world is widely known and very deeply admired, but in a small way that applied even to wider, which was a new institution, new kind of a place where research would be done, as the name indicated, or an acronym, wider. It was trying to take a wider, a broader, a more inclusive view of the world, and the pursuit of development studies has to be done. It was determined at that time on a much broader basis than was indeed conventional. And in that part was enormously important, part was played by Marti Artisai as one of the principal advisors and influences in the early days of wider. And in particular, some of his concern, including the one which you will be talking about today, I understand, namely the importance of equity and the issues of fairness in the process of the world, the development of the world, and in that context both peace and prosperity. Really among the major issues we try to deal with is sometimes a kind of artificial barrier, raising, you know, economic expansion is one thing, but equity is yet another. That's not the right way of thinking about it. One thing, you don't get much economic expansion if you trouble with problems of inequality within as well as discontent, which often can come when some people's lives are not going well at all despite other people's life rolling forward. Now President Artisai has been very concerned with these issues for a very long time and I remember wonderful discussions with him and actually with his wife also on these subjects when we were trying to look for a vision for wider. And I think that question remains alive today. I was just thinking about it because I've published recently a book on India and one of the issues is that the high rate of economic growth of India has not translated into the bettering of the lives of the bulk of the population. And in some ways the concern is not just to view it artificially separate and namely you have the growth and how you can then make people's lives better. But people's lives better is part of the engagement of which growth is also a byproduct. As I think Adam Smith noted well over 200 years ago that there's nothing as important as having a healthy, educated workforce who can cultivate their skill, who can improve on their skill and who have a sense of satisfaction with their lives in the community including he discussed particularly such issues as appearing in public without shame participating in public discussion. But these have been among the central concerns of the entire United Nations of which of course Mati Atissari has been a central figure in recent days in recent years, decades actually. And I think these issues remain. I mean in the context of India at the moment that people are talking about how does the growth rate have come out to be, how is it not sustaining itself. Well there are all kinds of problems when people point to the failure to deal with the physical infrastructure. But there are similar issues of the social infrastructure too. That is the potholes on the road are very easy to see but potholes in our health care and education system are not so easy to detect. So I think the entire approach that beginning with director Lal Javada who is the first director of WIDA and many of us were trying to advise him I think of other advisors like Steve Maglin and others and also a lot of the people working in WIDA at that time like S. R. Asmani we were very concerned about how make equity a part of the picture, not a detachable whole to the story of human progress to see that human progress has to be understood in terms of what it does to the lives of the people the well-being and freedom of the people and to understand how the well-being and the freedom of the people feedback in making growth sustainable not just environmentally that too is very important but also sustainable socially. And my one deep regret is that I can't be there today and listen to Mati Atisari speaking again I've had that pleasurable experience many times I feel very deprived that I won't be able to have that pleasure now but I take this opportunity of wishing everyone a wonderful time and I minimally demand a full report as to what happens today We shall make sure that report is provided President Atisari may I ask you to take the floor Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen First of all I want to express my gratitude for being able to participate and hopefully contribute to the annual lecture series of the Weider Institute I'm extremely pleased that Finland some 30 years ago decided to express a clear political support for the recently established work of the UN University as I was also always very supportive of the idea of Finland hosting Weider speaking today here in Helsinki makes this occasion very special one for me I still remember well the discussion around the establishment of the UN University in the early 70s and the Weider Institute a bit later on The fundamental argument at the time was that there was a need for sustained and international effort to produce high level research and in-depth understanding on how global economic system works and how does that affect on demanding needs of developing countries at the time and as we all know from those days of the 80s that system has changed and evolved a lot even dramatically in some sense and at the same time the fundamental task and mandate of wider institutes has remained the same the demanding need to understand and sometimes even guide the global economic system or systems as one might nowadays argue is as timely as ever even though we have managed to move towards the poverty reduction calls at the global scale we still have a lot to do in terms of understanding what poverty really means in the 21st century the basic challenge for the researchers and political decision makers all around the world is still the same than in the 70s and 80s as societies and their dynamics constantly change the way we see and interpret the nature of poverty and growth also changes this is not only an interesting theoretical discussion around the economic paradism and models our understanding of economics, poverty and growth deeply affects the choices we make and the political practices we choose when combating the everyday challenges of inequality whether at the level of global decision making national or regional policies or even at the level of smaller local communities my personal experience on these challenges goes back all the way to the early 60s when I for the first time encountered serious development and the globalist challenges when I was working for Swedish NGO which had a marvellous name, Central Committee for Swedish Technical Assistance and I was sent to Pakistan the observations I made at the time have been guiding me throughout my whole career unless we can solve the very challenges of deep inequalities in any given society we can never achieve the Kantian vision of perpetual peace and the question is, as it has always been how do we do it? Dear friends, one of the thought-provoking articles I have read during the last few years was the article by one of the initiators of the Wider Institute whom we just heard, Professor Amartya Sen in the New York reviewer box he wrote some slightly over two years ago an article in which he compared critically the quality of life in India and China the two giant economies with impressive numbers of growth in terms of GDP in sense thinking which I fully endorse the significant question is not only how we achieve economic growth but what the government does with the public revenue that is generated by economic growth so when assessing the celebrated growth figures of India and China it is not the question of financial surpluses or the amount of investment we should only be discussing about but their effect on people's quality of life in sense comparison the conclusion is clear China wins hands down India basically at all fronts of societal development let me take few examples from his article if you look at the life expectancy in China it is 73.5 years in India only 64.4 years the maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 life births in India 38 in China China's adult literacy rate is 94 percent compared with India's 74 percent literacy rate for women between ages of 15 and 24 in India is not much above 80 percent whereas in China it is 99 percent and if you look at children the situation is even more dramatic a very substantial proportion of Indian children and undernourished compared with a very small proportion in China and only 66 percent of Indian children are in unit desized with triple vaccine as opposed to 97 percent in China please don't get me wrong by stating these facts I certainly am not proposing that the overall societal and political system in China would somehow be better than in India in terms of democratic participation India has been showing the way for long freedom of expression, political participation and vivid civil society are all crucial parts of modern India it is also obvious that China has to open political space to provide a political decision making and participation in the future but let's be frank something in this comparison does not fit into the way we are used to think strengthen democracy does not automatically ensure that economic trophy will benefit the people in the same article Amartya Sen continues to challenge the automatic meaning of GDP to the well-being of people in comparison between Bangladesh and India it becomes obvious that in Bangladesh the country whose GDP per capita is about half of that of India's many indicators tell us that the basic requirements of good life are better off than in India life expectancy, the proportion of underweight children mortality rate of children under 5 literacy rates of both men and women, vaccination rates etc all the indicators tell us the same story Bangladesh is a way ahead of India explaining factors for this are many out of which the role of liberated women and politically active and strategic civil society in the country certainly are not least ones and all this has something to do with the egalitarian principles and policies Dear friends, I have become more and more confident that we have to start seriously challenging our conventional ways of thinking when it comes to the relation between economic growth and quality of life or development if you wish and this does not only concern developing countries or emerging economies but also the western world, Europe and US in particular but the good thing is that we also have some good examples of egalitarian policies from which we can learn from let me take a look at some of the things we have learned here in the Nordic countries to put in a nutshell the basic idea of a Nordic model is to pursue universal welfare policies which means that public programs, services and transfers are designed to serve everyone living in the country democratic principles and the rule of law are cornerstones or our everyday political decision making we believe in the basic tenets of fair society which treats everyone on an equal footing this society has relatively long roots already now which cannot be said about many other western societies as the recent article in the Economist portrayed it if you want to experience the American dream, go to Sweden the recent study which I initiated and my organization Crisis Management Initiative will shortly publish actually it's coming out next week shows it clearly that economic growth alone is no longer a remedy against poverty deprivation and other social ills naturally we need environmentally and socially sustainable economic growth but what matters is not only the aggregate level of national wealth but also how the wealth is used within a society indeed in countries with more equal revenue sharing there's a more trust between people a higher perceived level of well being lower infant mortality better health, longer life expectancy greater social mobility and better learning results for children in school there are fewer homicides and even fewer prisoners in jail let me again quote Professor Amartya Sen when he talks about functional capabilities in the society the lack of functional capabilities opens up the whole poverty discourse to deal with much wider issues than such the scarcity of money education, health, cultural and social capital must be included in the bundle of capabilities needed for the full and free participation in societal activities in the case of capabilities deprivation societal tensions always increase ladies and gentlemen in today's world we don't need raw capitalism not any sort of socialism but responsible egalitarian market economy which the Nordic countries represent at their best so the severe challenge for our societies in the 21st century is not only how we manage to create wealth but also how we use it but please let's not be naive even the Nordic model cannot be taken for granted at the same time with the crisis of the whole European economy we are facing big structural problems in the continent our egalitarian values and our societal model are at stake and we have to take it very seriously our Nordic tradition of balancing the markets and growth with benefits to the society is entering a challenging phase our struggling economy is still able to pay the cost of our social model when considering the answer one should also ask whether our societies can pay the social cost of increasing poverty and inequality in the future according to a recent study by Oxfam the austerity programs implemented in Europe as a response to high public debt and budget deficits also have an impact for the recent increase in poverty and inequality it is estimated by Eurostat that in 2011 24% of the population in the EU risked poverty or social exclusion the figure is estimated to rise by additional 50 to 25 million by 2025 we cannot afford such socio-economic development and creation of deeply unequal societies for our future generations increasing youth unemployment means for millions of young Europeans that they lack the resources needed to participate in the global way of life of the surrounding society the cost of such development overrides by far the investments in proactive employment policies Ladies and gentlemen, another thing that I want to briefly touch upon is governance which again is closely related to the whole debate on fair society and quality of life still it's a being a member of the Board of the Price Committee of Moe Ibrahim Foundation the foundation has done a groundbreaking work in developing indicators for good governance the Ibrahim Index of African Governance currently analyses annually the performance of African countries and governments with 88 aspects of governance in four overreaching categories safety and rule of law participation and human rights sustainable economic opportunity and human development the index indicates a close relations between good governance principles and egalitarian policies but talking about Ibrahim Good Governance Index I certainly don't want to claim that good governance is a challenge only for African or Asian countries quite contrary I would like to use the same methodology to assess also the performance of all countries of European Council and its 47 member countries I'm sure this would make a very interesting comparison egalitarian principles are also pivotal tool on the field of conflict resolution and mediation or prevention if you may if one considers conflict resolution and mediation only as a distribution of political and economic powers as many mistakenly take it he or she will never succeed all the political challenges that have to do with people's quality of life have to be taken into account when negotiating and implementing peace sustainable peace is not measured only by the absence of violence and violent structures but by opportunities and access to these opportunities available in the society it is a task of any peace mediator to ensure that peace advances access to these opportunities when talking about sustainable peace in any given society equal access to opportunities is everything only this way we can build a society in which its citizens accept and respect their public institutions if access to opportunities is not properly ensured legitimacy base of politics will always be erupted without proper education, health system and adequate level of social security operational capabilities of citizens will not be materialized Dear friends, it is very clear for me that I shouldn't have had the that if I shouldn't have had the access to various opportunities in this country in my past I certainly wouldn't be standing here today I'm a product of Nordic model which is based on egalitarian principles these principles are the ones we need to work for actively and strategically and defend them because they are worth defending I thank you Thank you so much We are now joined by a panel of three distinguished specialists in development who have agreed to share today the challenges and the issues and challenges addressed by President Artisaria and Professor Sen May I introduce to you Elsie Kansa at the helm of Africa the World Economic Forum as director formerly an economic advisor to the president of Tanzania and who in 2011 was named one of Forbes 20 power women in Africa Welcome to you Elsie Professor Martin Rovellian who after a stunning career at the World Bank most recently as director of the World Bank's research department is now at Georgetown University Welcome Martin and Professor Ravi Kanpur from Cornell University and I'm happy to say member of the wider board one of the most insightful development economists who has over the years been associated with wider Ravi thanks for being here Martin you have more than anyone contributed to our understanding of poverty measurement and impact assessment what implications does the equitable Nordic approach have in reducing global poverty if any I've often wondered about this and I've often been a little bit disappointed that there wasn't more articulation that's sounding better of what a Nordic model means and what the implications are for developing countries and I think it is a relevant alternative model but I think it tends to be characterised by people who don't know much about it in rather simplistic terms I don't pretend to know a lot either I've studied policy in poor countries for almost all my working life and correct me if I say anything questionable about the Nordic model I don't think it's about fiscal redistribution I don't think it's about using the tools of taxation and spending to redistribute from rich people to poor people in a straightforward way nor do I think it's certainly that's been part of the Nordic model but nor do I think it's crucially about the capability of states locally and centrally I think that's part of the model too but those two features are shared by many other models and some very prominent ones if I think about it and correct me if I'm wrong I'd say it was very much about the concept of equity the egalitarian principle and I think in the Nordic model I contend that it's very much around not so much inequality of opportunity but assuring reduction in the poverty of opportunity the fact that opportunities are low or terrible for many poor people for focusing the opportunity of egalitarianism toward the opportunities, lack of opportunities of the poorest people in society and using the tools of fiscal redistribution to expand those opportunities in a way that they can achieve a broad social consensus I think that's been crucial how relevant is that to the countries that I work in more than any other in India and China but others too I think there are a couple of points I'd make on the relevance people sometimes say that this stuff of inequality opportunity is just something for rich countries it's a concept coming out of the rich world and it's not really relevant to developing countries I would question that and first thing I'd point out there's a very idea of equality opportunity it came from rich countries but when they were poor countries it emerged toward the end of the age of enlightenment and the latter part of the 18th century in countries which would be considered poor if they were by today's standards it isn't just a concept for rich countries it's a concept that emerged in developing countries but the developing countries which became the rich countries of today I'd also argue it's a concept that's relevant as Finn mentioned I worked for the World Bank for a long time it would be no surprise that not because I worked for the World Bank that I think economic growth is hugely important to expanding opportunities it's not an end, it's a means but it's something that's very important to achieving those ends but equally well I'd say expanding opportunities of poor people is crucial to achieving that growth if you can get in a virtuous cycle of expanding opportunities promoting economic growth because it's often poor people who are locked out of the opportunities for economic expansion and the more people you have, the less economic expansion you're going to have in the aggregate and that's a crucial point I think it's also important for peace for the sustainability of peace both in the ability of opportunity of egalitarianism to promote economic opportunity but also to make the peace sustainable and that's obviously crucial the forms of public action the importance of making sure that the opportunity expansion is for those who lack opportunities the point of opportunity egalitarianism if you like is not to reduce the opportunities of those who have ample opportunity but of course you're going to need fiscal redistribution you're going to need to tax rich people to finance the interventions you need to expand the opportunities of poor people to assure that they can participate in economic expansion going forward also issues I think importantly of legal justice and democratic reforms when I'm impressed that I've recently written a history of thought on anti-poverty policy and I was struck which I wrote from my PhD students in economics at Georgetown who like me, even more than me didn't know much about the history of thought economists have not taught this anymore but I was really struck by how much political struggle there was to achieve the things that we now take for granted in rich countries have been achieved in some developing countries and what struggle was involved the ability of people to organize the ability of the labor movement that's contributed enormously to that progress in basic things like suffrage which we take for granted now issues in debate and I think there are still a few just a couple of points I don't think opportunity of egalitarianism will ever be a sufficient principle for equity it's not enough and the reason is that opportunity of egalitarianism essentially says that if it's all to do with your individual effort then the inequality is okay now we can accept that as a principle and I think it could have a lot of currency but people make mistakes all kinds of things happen that efforts that end up in deprivations that we will want policy to address another issue is the scope for individual responsibility individual responsibility is evident in everything to do with the philosophical discussions and the economic discussions of opportunity of egalitarianism but it's a slippery slope there behavior intervenes all the time between circumstances and outcomes in society and there are all kinds of ways in which the opportunity of egalitarianism can somewhat carelessly slip into either blaming poor people for their poverty or excusing rich people for their riches on the grounds of some effort they made to achieve those riches and that can be entirely legitimate or it cannot be but it becomes very fuzzy so I think there's a lot of work to do actually in adapting if possible the Nordic model to developing countries and I think we've seen progress along that work but I think there's a lot more to do Ravi, you work mainly in non-Nordic settings although you're a welcome visitor to Finland regularly but you work mainly in Africa, Asia what is your perspective on the Artisari vision is the Nordic experience relevant for developing countries what's your perspective? Good well, thank you let me first of all say thank you to President Artisari not only for the speech but also the detail paper which we have, it's going to be released next week I believe this one, yeah and that has a lot of detail and actually my comments are addressed somewhat to the more detailed paper as well so Finn's question is is the Nordic model or is the Nordic experience relative for social policy in low-income countries and my answer is yes and no so let me say first of all in what sense it isn't directly relevant and then say in what sense it is and I think both the elements of this are actually present in President Artisari's longer paper so I draw on longer paper for making these comments so the sense in which it's not relevant is if we take the current situation if we take the current mechanisms take the current implementation and try to translate that automatically into a low-income setting and all of us may say yeah that's obviously wrong but I assure you there's a tendency to do that there's a tendency to slip into that frame and I think there are two aspects of the current of the realities of low-income countries contrasted with the Nordic setting which of course is discussed by President Artisari in the longer paper firstly it's the heterogeneity in these countries relative homogeneity in Nordic settings and secondly the state capacity that's available in low-income countries versus the state capacity that's available in the Nordic context and I think we have to be extremely cautious in making simple translations and say well let's have this particular social security system or that particular thing etc. in the Nordic system I think that's an obvious point and it's made in the President Artisari's paper but I think it's as well for us to bear that in mind because believe you me we do slip into that in policy context particularly when we're dealing with governments of low-income countries let me say the sense in which it is relevant what's relevant to me and again this comes out in the President's paper is the history of how Nordic countries got from where they were to where they are because as he makes clear in the paper it wasn't so long ago less than a hundred years ago that actually these countries had low state capacity and were heterogeneous in highly politically salient senses as I said in the paper people outside of Finland don't realize that when you say white or red in Finland that signifies something dramatic quite dramatic in terms of the Civil War and families trace their origins back to this and that those cleavages in Finnish society from the Civil War were overcome and I think in a sense more relevant to low-income countries is how were they overcome what was the process what were the two steps forward one step back of that process and this paper President Atasari touches on that and the role of the education system and so on but I think I would like to see more work done on that and frankly that I think would be highly relevant to low-income countries to those people like me who advise low-income countries etc what were the mechanisms a hundred years ago, 70 years ago even 50 years ago after the Second World War when the great displacements of population took place in Finland what was the detail of that process and that to me is where yes it is highly relevant it's the history that's highly relevant and the second is of course against state capacity because again as it's pointed out in the paper a hundred years ago there wasn't the state capacity but it was actually purposefully developed and what's interesting is how there was an ecology developed where the need for social policy led to development of state capacity and that then fed back into social policy etc we know this in a very general sense but what we have here is a real live laboratory of how it happened and I for one don't know enough about that and the lessons of that of that experience so those are really my observations is the Nordic experience relevant for social policy in low-income countries I would say be very cautious be very cautious and particularly in the aid context particularly in the context when there's Nordic money on the table not to make simple translations from this to that but on the other hand as made very clear in the paper it's the history that's important and there there are indeed very deep lessons to be learned but we need much more work to be done on that in order for the lessons to be drawn out and then translated across thank you Elsie there's a development practitioner advisor you have a primary interest in lessons that may be relevant for Africa how does what we've heard today contribute well thank you very much Fin by and large I will echo what has been said so far and also underscore some of the differences that I think are critical to the applicability of the Nordic model in Africa first of all is just the size of the continent to talk about 54-55 countries depending on how you count it and while on the face of it I myself as well as many others do agree with President Attisari that we need to look beyond growth in terms of measuring GDP and move towards improving the lives of people and this issue has become much more urgent and critical at the moment because of the of the crisis that took place in North Africa and I've brought to the forefront that it's not enough to do well in terms of GDP it's not enough for you to have a well-qualified labor force they have to have something to do or else they will take the government to account and also then push this element of the role of the state and one of the key outcomes that we're seeing one from that but then also from the industrial actions that have to a large extent paralyze the mining sector in South Africa is the state is also perceived as a threat rather than as a form of support looking out for the interests of the people and therefore there's an increased interest in broadening the stakeholder group that is vested with the responsibility one of actually delivering on growth but then two on also improving on people's lives also by involving the people themselves just looking at the continent and the diversity there within about seven of the fastest growing countries around the world are in sub-Saharan Africa is a mixed group less than a third are actually growing on the basis of natural resources although many of us think that it's the resource rich countries that are driving the growth but that's not true we have countries like Ethiopia that are growing on the basis of being able to transform their agriculture we also have amongst the resource rich so-called fragile states like Sierra Leone which further complicates the picture because it introduces a lot more I'd say threats with respect to the strength of the states and the institutions because the institutional frameworks are quite weak and in and of itself leads us to question sustainability of a natural resource management in those particular countries that notwithstanding we've seen improvements in terms of social indicators across Africa access to health and education has increased the elimination of extreme poverty has increased we've seen the number of Africans living at less than $1.25 per day dropping from about 58 to 48% and school enrollment is now up by about 80% even with respect to bridging inequality just with respect to closing the gender gap our reports the global gender gap in 2012 showed that sub-Saharan Africa has managed to close the gap by about 66% and back to the point about diversity the top performer is Lesotho in general though Africa continues to perform really poorly with respect to the education sub-index and this is where you have the largest gender gap so with respect to where we see some limitations and this really I raise as a question as to how to bridge the gap is that Africa is starting from a very low base so huge infrastructure deficits food insecurity is still a major challenge which is compounded by the global challenge of addressing climate change but then you also have challenges that arise from the continent itself for example the intra-African trade is about 12% compared to about 40% in Asia and 60% in the European Union again with respect to inequality as well there's challenges that are also spatial moving beyond just income inequality or gender inequality and increasingly you have inequalities that are along the lines of religious backgrounds or ethnicity which further complicates the policy measures that they take in to address them the most important point though is it seems that the patterns of economic growth that have been pursued today seems to be entrenching and worsening the inequalities and there's an increased interest in finding new ways and new growth models that can actively reduce the inequality some of the things that we've seen happening is increased collaboration for example around agriculture there are quite a few people quite a few of the poorest or the majority of the poorest people are involved in the agricultural sector so how can the different stakeholders work together and find a way of pursuing agricultural transformation interventions that actually bring along smallholder farmers as opposed to pursuing interventions that assume that smallholder farmers will come along the jury is still out and about 40% of Africans now live in cities and this is actually higher than the rate for India and the last point to make is that what's also compounding the problem is youth unemployment the estimates are that by 2015 Africa will be the youngest continent in the world and by 2040 Africa will have a labour force that equals China now if you look at the gaps with respect to infrastructure it's quite a worrying picture as to how the governments but then also business civil society can organize themselves to be able to one, ensure that you can sustain the growth path which is necessary but two, ensure that people's lives are transformed in this respect the majority of people because some people already live very luxurious lifestyles first world lifestyles but the majority of people actually feel they've been carried along by this wave of progress Thanks Martin in 1990 more than 90% of the world's poor lived in low income countries this is changed today some 75% of the world's poor are in middle income countries President Adasari has made the point that the situation the worst off in a society is a powerful indicator of how successful the entire society is so I'm sort of wondering does that mean the development over the past 25 years have not really lived up to expectations again I think we have a microphone on problem microphone off problem we've made enormous progress against poverty the fact that 90% or some percentage I'm not sure there's 90 live in middle income countries and that's a rather fictional category I really can't attach any meaning to that concept almost but that fact does not mean we've been unsuccessful against poverty those countries this means some the poor are still roughly where they were before it's just that those countries have been successful against poverty and hence their poverty is now concentrated in that category of countries looking forward and the acceleration we're seeing in poverty reduction extreme absolute poverty reduction in the developing world is remarkable and it's not just China I think if you're looking at the period since 2000 or we've not seen anything like it before I emphasise it's about extreme absolute poverty literally a living below $1.25 a day meaning living below the standards of what poverty means in the poorest countries in the world if you use higher standards the progress is not nearly as impressive if you're looking at extreme poverty the progress is undeniable and in fact if that trajectory since 2000 if that continues we'll get down to a poverty rate extreme poverty rate of 3% by 2030 and have a paper documenting how we could do that so I actually very optimistic on that dimension of poverty I think there's a lot of work to do in non-income dimensions of poverty which will be crucial and synergistic with income poverty reduction and there's also a lot of work to do in addressing poverty by the standards of the country you live in we're talking about $1.25 a day we're talking about an absolute standard across all countries and I think we have to think of two measures if you like in any country that absolute standard and the standard of what poverty means in that country or the standards that are typical of living both an absolute and a relative concept are going to be relevant going forward they can talk further about this but I think it's time to shut up that makes a lot of sense to me Ravi you wish to add anything and I'm sort of wondering do you have any reactions to the way in which person are sorry and sort of discussed India and China let me so I won't talk about the India-China comparison because you know we could be here all night on that thing there are books written about it and the whole sort of articles and so on and I think President Atisari basically touched on touched on the fundamental issues involved when he said let's be frank there's something in here that we're not used the way we're not used to thinking I think that's exactly right but let me take up the next comparison that he came to and link it back to my state capacity which is the Bangladesh comparison in the literature there's something called the Bangladesh Paradox and the paradox is not actually that Bangladesh the label paradox is not to the fact that Bangladesh has half of India's per capita GNP and yet has these good social indicators the paradox is that Bangladesh on governance indicators comes out to be much worse than all these other countries comes out to be at the bottom of the world league in terms of the Transparency International etc etc and yet it has these fantastic social indicators relative to its own performance 15 years ago relative to India's performance relative to whatever neighborhood everything else so that to be friends let's face this factor what's going on over here well one response to that is actually these international governance indicators are right the state essentially has collapsed it's totally corrupt it's whatever it is but you know it's all these it's the NGOs it's Grameen Bank it's Muhammad Yunus really doing all this sort of stuff and I think that's too easy an answer that's clearly a contribution I think that's too easy an answer and it actually takes us away from what exactly state capacity and whether state capacity is actually being measured accurately by our international measures of governance and transparency international because the way that I put it to my students is somebody has to build a road on which Muhammad Yunus rides his bicycle to the village to do the micro credit scheme somebody has to maintain the regulatory framework within which a micro banking system operates and at the very at the very least or at the very worst the government could have stepped in there and ruined it for Yunus but they didn't we have to understand the political economy of how it was that the state which could have messed things up and indeed according to these transparency international things seems to have messed it but didn't have to go back so I think that leads us to a whole interesting set of discussions about the nature of state capacity when the country with the worst governance indicators has these excellent social indicators performance social indicators and you cannot put it all down to Grameen Bank and Prashika and BRAC and so on there was something after the war of independence in Bangladesh which led to as the president mentioned the empowerment of women etc and that's the route that we should be going and how exactly the state facilitated that at the very at the very minimal by actually not getting in the way but also by positively supporting it Thanks, Elsie, I know that you have quite some views on Adasari's discussions and reflection around productivity and competitiveness I guess it's fair to say that Africa needs to compete Do you have any thoughts? Yes, and this time I'll be much shorter One, it's quite fascinating that Finland in particular has managed to sustain its ranking as the third most productive and competitive country in the world according to the Global Competitiveness Index and Sweden is also in the top 10 and then you have Norway and Denmark you know in 11 and 15 or 16 and in contrast the top ranked African countries Mauritius at 45 and the assessment of the different indicators is that part of the success with respect to Finland as well as most of the other Nordic countries is having very healthy macroeconomic environments which can be said to be true in terms of the reforms that are taking place amongst many countries in sub-Saharan Africa strong public institutions very transparent institutions and that is a major challenge for Africa then also the foundation of education very high quality of education at all levels and the key question that I have here is one, to what extent countries in Africa can replicate this given the resources that countries like Finland put into the system to for instance ensure that everyone has access to education for free and it's very high quality level of education globally very well recognized and how sustainable is that for most countries where most of the labour force is not paying taxes is involved in the informal economy this to some extent seems like a nice idea, something that's nice to have but not really realistic link to that is also the size of Finland is roughly about the size of Dar es Salaam, you can correct me if I'm wrong and is there something to be said for putting in place this system and making things work in a small economy versus the larger diverse economies that we in Africa have to contend with and finally it's just the trust element that is also quite central to the value of the Finns but also across the other Nordic countries and to be honest that the people feel in Africa is true for much of the emerging world that corruptions to entrench people care too much about themselves or their people vis-a-vis the broader population and again to what extent can we actually export this brand is it exportable are you also seeing challenges that are emerging from increased immigration opening up to values from other places perhaps there's something in this maybe a non-issue but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts thank you President Arsar you want to briefly reflect on these remarks we discussed before came here whether I should say anything but I can't sit here quiet when my old friends are like you are challenging me I owe it to you from our past first of all when we talk about resources first of all I made a long list of things what one can do in any society first of all how do you use your resources how much you have is another issue but how do you use whatever you have on education I would clearly keep reference to girls in education if you have a scarcity of funds give girls a privilege you remember that news week chose Finland as the best place to live when I heard that from my wife I said to her how lousy are the others I was on the phone and far away so she didn't get on me but the point I wanted to tell her that if we start believing that we are living in a paradise already everything is relative that we are relatively better than others all the comparisons tell about that but we are not living in paradise and when it comes to gender equality we are supposed to be again on the top of the list but there's enormous amount of work that needs to be done in this society I say it everywhere where I speak that the women have to be much much better than the men in order to get the same treatment in a society there's no question about that and I hope that none of the Finnish men here are denying what I'm saying then decent education when you start from that so that the teachers are in the school and they don't only appear once or twice a week there to collect their salaries rule of law if you want to have a society you have to have a proper functioning rule of law and it costs less to have a properly functioning rule of law than non-functioning rule of law as we both know transparency in what the governments do and how the official resources are used and negative attitude towards corruption because we know that corruption is pestering all societies some less than others but it's rampant in many places can I answer another question at the same time sure Ravi I was talking about how we succeeded in coming out of the civil war in this society in the beginning of our independence I spoke last week in Bangkok Thai government is trying to start a reconciliation process which is not an easy I was there with number of speakers I was supposed to talk about my own experience but I decided to start from Finland because I think it's only fair to say that even this society has gone through as you rightly say that would perhaps be something to learn perhaps the major thing I would like to say is that this was a very clear fight we had whites and reds describing the political sides the whites one but those who lost were given a political chance to participate in elections which followed one year after these events and then 10 years later they gained the majority in the parliament those who lost after the war during the war everyone was united whatever you did the civil war and thereafter everyone had a chance to participate in the political process on the basis of what support they had in the society I think this inclusion is perhaps the message I would give even in speaking when I go again to Thailand and discuss with the parties there so these are the perhaps the simple things I would actually give to everybody thank you and now we will open up for some questions from the floor may I remind everyone to introduce yourself and please do stick at least reasonably to today's topic also in the interest of white participation could you please state your questions or make your comment in a concise manner you will have already noticed time is slipping we have a tradition in wider of microphones that suddenly go off so watch out they may go off so be precise please we will take questions one by one and then we will have some reactions who want to start up here thank you Tony Addison from the wider institute President Nordic political leaders seem to have had a very great ability to steer their societies through the turbulence of globalization big geopolitical events many many different and challenging situations and create a consensus about change and adaption when you talk to leaders in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world what do you advise about leadership that we have today with its many challenges and its many uncertainties Mr President first of all I don't think that I travel anymore that much in different parts of the world and I used to I still travel 100 and 150 days but slightly less trying to advise governments on what they should be doing except in this example from Thailand I think first of all it is important that everywhere we recognize what is the reality you can't hide the facts of life and you have to try to read a common understanding I remember when I became president in the beginning of 94 we had our unemployment rate was around 80 percent and we had 450,000 people were unemployed and I had talked about improving the employment possibilities though it was not regarded as a presidential function I I was approached by the Secretary General of the Central Labor Union and the leading capitalist in this country at the time a mediator who had worked for Finnish industry and they said that we are prepared to work with you if you want to improve the situation we managed to have I give this as an example we managed to have individuals coming to this working group who didn't represent their organizations but themselves they came with the recommendations our aim was to improve in six years which was my term as president to cut it down to 200,000 the figure of unemployed we succeeded in getting it down to 250,000 because government paid the official debt faster than we had anticipated which was fair enough but that shows I think something in this society of ours that we have a capacity which I hope that we can transfer and tell about much more that when things are difficult we sit down and we find a way how we can work together and improve the situation dramatically which we did in the 90s I was criticized that I was interfering with something that I had nothing to do I traveled with the Finnish industry to every place they wanted in export promotion fashion except South Korea which had economic difficulties and we agreed that there we shouldn't go well over 20 trips with industry wherever they wanted me to help them to promote Finnish exports and it worked so you have to recognize the facts and I think in our society that has been we have had economics meeting from employers and employees under the Ministry of Finance and there's no great disagreement how the economic outlook looks like so it's possible to start the salary negotiations on the basis of those facts I have always admired that capacity in this society and that you can tell your own story and if the end result is good I hope somebody listens but I have no illusion how difficult it is Okay, there was a gentleman in the very back No, you use the mic please there are people who listen outside Okay, my name is Markus Manfors and I am from Helsinki School of Economics and my question to the all panel at least for President Ahtisari what do you think which one is the best model social model, Finnish model Russian model US model, Chinese model or something else and why Okay Mr President, which model is the best? I honestly don't know I use hand or teacher in the you are student course assistant, my god because I hope you listen what I said why I argue that it's worthwhile for us to produce this paper with the help of two scholars from Finland two from Sweden and one from Denmark they are the authors of that paper and I have not influenced their work at all because I feel that inequality, I have lived in the United States for long enough and I have always been arguing for transatlantic cooperation and in favor that's well known and I know that if I want to solve any problem, if I can't have the opportunity and supporting me what I intend to do there's very little chances of getting anything done and that I learned from my first enterprise when I was dealing with Namibia and every other conflict there after I was involved but there's no question that I don't think that and you don't necessarily need to read Jeffrey Jack's book or Joseph Stiglitz's price of inequality or Henrik Smith's book who has stolen the American dream to see that at the moment the American dream is not there inequality has increased to the extent that it's a bit scary so my answer is very clear I hope that at least if we are organized in the Nordic countries we should be better organized to offer our view on how we have achieved over the decades to come where we are at the moment and how this society functions now how it needs to be adjusted because it's not a sort of stable situation but I I don't hesitate in saying that I don't know any better model for ordinary citizens in the society and it's so that there's another book the Spirit Level Wilkinson and Kate Pickett with a subtitle Equality is Good for Everybody in the society and it's worthwhile to look at that book recommend that to your friend all for our 3D there was a lady in row 3 from the back okay no indication okay there's a gentleman here from Africa just in front of the just speaking yeah thank you my name is Abdul Gaffaro Abdulai and I come from Ghana and my question goes to Martin I very much in your arguments that expanding opportunities to do is excluded it's important to stimulate the national economic growth and for sustainable peace and development but as someone coming from the world but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about the central message of the world development report 2009 that because economic growth some places are more naturally endowed than others developing country governments should focus on moving the poor from lagging areas to more productive sectors or productive parts of a country rather than striving to move productive investments to the poorer regions what is the potential of such an argument in terms of stimulating more inclusive forms of development given what we know about the deplorable state in which most migrants across the world often do find themselves okay Martin you want to react yeah sure well I'm no longer at the world bank which also means I can criticize openly not that I was constrained before one thing is I'm really not a big fan of world development reports the gentleman to my left did one of the best he dumped it he dumped it before it was finished it wasn't quite as good as it could have been but that world development report you've signaled out the one that I would probably raise the most objections to of all the world development reports but I would say that there are important constraints on the mobility of people and those constraints hit poor people more than others and to the extent that public action is directed at eliminating those constraints when they're costless or at least making an effort to eliminating them when they're not as appropriate I'd say that was a good thing you are one of the biggest constraints on mobility in the world today is in China the Hukou system of registration which is a huge cost to poor people in China combined with the fact that they can't buy and sell agricultural land freely the two those two features I mean that poor people are taxed in a sense they can't turn their main asset poor people predominantly rural can't turn their main asset can't monetize their main asset and easily move to the cities because they can't bring their children and their families because of the registration system it essentially an internal passport system within China I think reforming that system basically eliminating it which as the Central Communist Party has been trying to do for a long time but without success is one of the most important agendas for mobility and poverty reduction in the world today hugely important so here's an example that's consistent with that but the idea of generalizing I think that report just generalized the idea too far and built it on a rather simplistic I might be rather simplistic economic model okay there was a gentleman over here here a little bit back yeah go back here thank you so much for a wonderful panel it's a question for Mr. President perhaps you can say a little bit about the I am from the Netherlands one of the things that struck me in the last 10 years there's still a country that is marked by strong egalitarian principles and has turned distinctly anti-immigrant my superficial study of what happened in Europe suggests that Denmark was very much ahead and I'm not talking about day-to-day racism which is not unique but certainly in the way in which the state has marginalized or created a feeling of marginalization among immigrant people and I just was wondering if you could comment on that side of the Nordic model where the homogeneity is very important for the egalitarian principles and the constraints the possible constraints or the possibilities to overcome the constraints vis-à-vis immigrants and my name is Arjan Lahan by the way from IDRC okay Mr. President I could have actually said that when I talk about Nordic model in all fairness I should have mentioned that Netherlands and Germany to some to very large extent are following similar principles in these two societies it's traditionally argued and that issue is tackled also in the paper so I give you the name so that you can look next week our website and hopefully get it from there it's a recipe for better life experiences from the Nordic countries this is the title of the report but the fact of life is that if you would compare Sweden and UK it was surprised to me but what the authors proved was that there are more foreign born people in Sweden compared to the original population in Sweden than in UK and that was not what I had expected so the structure of the society changes and I think it's a major challenge for all the countries and it has clearly political consequences look at the I can't help thinking that the recent elections in Norway for instance had something to do with the immigration policies so it's a major challenge because on the other hand it's very clear that for the whole of Europe with the age in population if we don't have people coming from outside Europe to work in our economy and society I think we are lost I mean that's what I mean that we have to recognize the facts of life and actually encourage the proper immigration processes and proper training for those who come so that they can be integrated properly and they have a prosperous life okay, thank you okay, here I, yeah thank you I'm Steven from the University of Dar es Salaam Tanzania and I have a question that goes to both Mr. President and the Ravanio Martin Mr. President in your talk you mentioned that economic growth is no longer a remedy to poverty alleviation and what is important is how the generated revenue from economic growth is used but when Martin was making his contribution he emphasized that economic growth is important and it's really it's important so do you guys really want now to reconcile these two thank you so, the peacemaker thank you no, it's you know that I have very I have a love affair with Tanzania because I was young ambassador of 34 years of AIDS when I came to Tanzania in 1973 and I have dear friends from that time still I don't think we have any argument because if you don't have economic growth you have nothing to distribute how can you offer your citizens a decent education if you don't have revenues so economic growth is absolutely vital and I don't think we can make you can't argue that we have a different view my point was simply that it is important that we have paid so much attention for instance in this world and I have been in a global commission on improving the elections and so on we are having better and better elections in the world but we have very little observation still globally what do those who are elected perhaps in good and decent fair elections how are they using the power when they come to the office and we need to do that as well are they running egalitarian policies or are they running policies that are mainly enriching themselves and their relatives which we have enough examples in the world today and we don't need to go to Africa for that Martin you want to say anything about the empirical stylized facts need a little bit of rehearsing or repetition economic growth has typically I emphasize come with absolute poverty reduction in developing countries and that's an empirical observation the channels are not straightforward and President Atasari has mentioned an important one which is the scope that that creates for pro-poor interventions in other forms I think in the poorest countries that hasn't been the main mechanism I think the main mechanism has just been through the process of creating jobs and creating economic opportunities in those countries but I emphasize the typical there are exceptions to that stylized fact that it holds as a stylized fact but another second observation from the evidence is that the impact of a given rate of growth on poverty reduction varies enormously it's typically poverty reducing but you can talk about the same rate of growth can give you anything from a modest impact on poverty to a huge impact on poverty and what determines which it is the biggest thing is inequality simple economic inequality determines whether economic growth is going to be massively poverty reducing obviously the more inequality you have in the society the less the poor are able to participate in the benefit of economic growth the less poverty reduction you get from that economic growth thirdly I'd emphasize that there's an important feedback mechanism which I talked about before which is much more central to the discussion today which is that poverty itself the right sort of poverty reduction is important it's not probably necessary and it's probably not sufficient but it's important to economic growth and the sustainability of poverty reduction is important okay one last question from the floor and then I will ask the panel if they have any final comments before I give the last words to Prestonades sorry Andrea Karnia University of Florence formally wider I think that from what I know all the theory of collective action tells us that societies which are more homogeneous and they share the same objectives and so on and so forth and the paper which I quickly read the one which is coming out next week I already read it and the president was kind enough to give it to me half an hour ago so Raze is one of the, Christ will basically deny the fact that these are homogeneous societies and they are egalitarian because they are homogeneous so it looks like that this egalitarianism is a fact of the will so it's a moral fact it doesn't really fit with what economic theory tells us and at the same time I think that there are some factors which would be interesting to point out for instance in Finland and in Costa Rica there has never been high land concentration in Finland the landlords were the Swedes when the Swedes left the social classes appeared Costa Rica when the Spaniards they landed in Costa Rica they escaped on the hills Costa Rica has a very low land concentration and is the country with the highest equity in the region in the Sahel there are countries which are also at a much lower level of income they are much more cohesive so perhaps it would be important in promoting this ideal which I fully share also which are those which we may call endogenous factors or whatever you want that basically make universalism egalitarianism feasible and the 7th point is that I mean I saw that watch out the mic it might go out very quick one I mean because it's mentioned in the North of the President I mean Sweden has been ranked like number one as a country but at the same time we see that there are revolts in the peripheries and so on so forth and the North of the President says we have to invest more on integration because the North history of social integration is basically the US there are no other countries with 200 years of an history of migration so it's not so clear to me how it's going to go now Finland as Matti just told me 100,000 migrants out of 5 million now in Italy for instance there are already 10% of the population and so I think that one should think what do we have to do to integrate them and that takes money sure thanks Ravi you want to add anything at the end shall I just a couple of points linked to some of the discussions one is on the whole middle income low income country distinction which Martin touched upon and I think as he suggested this distinction is becoming less and less relevant in some sense particularly it's becoming less and less relevant in the architecture of development assistance when you have this massive sort of disconnect in some sense between where the poor live and whether the country is middle income or low income country so I think we're going to have to change that architecture significantly and I think this is going to come up in Africa as well because given the growth rate of the last few years a lot of African countries are now crossing the threshold from low income to middle income countries and they will according to our current architecture begin to lose access to those concessional funds so let's be ready for that issue to arise and I think that distinction is becoming less and less relevant and we need to rethink that my second observation and perhaps this is not the time to raise a contentious issue but in terms of equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes the president raised it in his in the paper and in his speech and Martin also referred to it in his talk I myself and in policy discourse it's always more congenial to talk about equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes somehow equality of outcomes raises hackles of socialism and this and that etc and so we use the term equality of opportunity I myself have written and I've argued that conceptually in my view crumbles in one's hands as you begin to use it and as a practical matter it crumbles in your hands so if I'm going to raise resources from somebody to build those schools which are meant to raise the opportunity for the lowest I'm going to be taxing people at the upper end who may claim they have got this because of their additional effort so I'm actually addressing an equality of outcome issue in order to address equality of opportunity as a practical matter I myself don't find this distinction hugely relevant and I think it may actually lead us down a wrong road but having said that I recognize for some reason which I don't understand the equality of opportunity term has a warm glow feeling about it whereas the equality of outcomes has this sort of oh well you're going to you're going to tax everybody to death and so on and so on that's the definition that I have Elsie, do you want to add any Sure just two points actually one was in response to the question about which models are suitable at least from the African context there's a lot more focus on experimentation and coming to the realization also that there's no one true model as well and while egalitarianism remains a principle worth pursuing the reality is that actually attaining that vision will require quite a bit of mixing and matching on the positive side with respect to experimentation something that's worth looking at is the new thinking with respect to inclusive institutions inclusive business models and quite a bit of experimentation that's taking place also the grassroots among communities and all kinds of new models of growth of participation of employment can accommodate can accommodate the broader population Thanks Edzie Martin, do you have any final remarks? Yeah, I thought going back to what President Artisari was saying and also what Amartya Senra was saying I thought I'd say something in defence of India and I work on both these countries as I mentioned and a number of points I'd make here I think this comparison and the way it's presented is not entirely fair to India just quickly I think initial conditions for China around 1980 were absolutely excellent the legacy of socialism meant you had a very literate workforce could be easily absorbed into the non-farm sector a poverty reduction process that started with agrarian reform as it always should but in China's case it was because of political economy a sequence of things that sort of happened that essentially meant that China over the subsequent 10 years could undo most of the damage that was done out of a failed economic system prior to that I think that's important the other side of the coin to that is that India faces didn't have those initial favorable conditions at the time its reform process started in the 80s and accelerating into the 90s it was always going to be a harder slog there's no question about that nothing surprises me about what happened since the second observation I'd make is ask yourself I don't disagree that China has done better than India but I would point to the differences in initial conditions again but ask yourself which of these two countries is capable of the biggest blunder which of the two countries could make the biggest mistakes biggest mistake in economic policy I would argue it has been China India did not have something hugely mistaken as the Great Leap Forward and the famine in 959-61 were extraordinary of course that was in the previous regime but a lot of the I don't think the conditions are the same at all now but I think India the checks and balances which also paralyze reform often those checks and balances are going to come into play to I would argue make a huge blunder less likely at the same time possibly making progressive reform harder as well there are nuances here there are different ways of looking at it and I think we have to be nuanced about the distinction in all these country comparisons and just going back to the question right at the back with the list of country models which are my country maybe prior to the last election President Arsari please you have the final words country first of all when I look not only Finland but when I talk about Nordic model I of course include all the Nordic countries in that us last when I talked about opportunity no child and I have read very often that that no child actually chooses his parents or her parents so if you are born in a wealthy prosperous family good and well if you are born in a poor family would that decide your future forever I am not prepared to accept that I think every child should be given opportunity to improve his or her skills as much as possible and get a chance in a society and that's why for the rest of my days I will fight for this model that we have developed over the years because it is important I I always think when Chinese leaders started sending their young bright people to best universities in the world they knew perfectly well that when they return back to China they become changed agents in that society we start seeing it now I remember in 97 my wife and I were invited by president Boris Yeltsin to Russian Karelia and I was sitting in a sauna with Boris Yeltsin and he had his bypass operation and was behaving very well like both of us we sat after the sauna on the terrace there and he said to me that Marty I have decided to send 30,000 young Russians to best universities in the world I said I think it's a very wise thing to do you'll see how the Chinese have done for a long long time I was very sad that he died far too early that project never went ahead but perhaps he had similar thoughts in mind when he was coming with that idea I have only fond memories from that weekend as he's and his wife's guest the other thing which makes me optimistic is that what happened in the Arab Spring when the people went to the Tahi Square and elsewhere after that if we who live in a democratic society don't have cuts to support people who I think made it very clear that these values that they were demanding are universal values then I don't think we should participate in these sort of gatherings I think it is important when people say that we want to have proper political participation we want freedom of expression we should support them and support the whole idea that these values are universal as they have always been so something very historical happened though sometimes I say that the Arab Spring started in the suburbs of Paris when people started complaining the same issues that then later on their perhaps relatives and friends did in their countries where they came from so I think opportunity is important but I have also realized in my own society that that's why I'm not particularly liking the term welfare society because it means that everything is given to you I think it should be enough that opportunity is giving to you that the society is free and fair and it gives you a chance for good education if you don't use that and use all the opportunities that the society offers you then you have basically not done your duty and sometimes the Nordic model or welfare society model has been criticized because of that so let's continue our discussion and I don't mind if somebody challenges and finds a better model that I have been advocating here please let me know before that it was very nice to be here with you thank you members of the panel and all who participated thank you very much both those here in Helsinki and virtually and as well my colleagues at wider and at CMI it's been great that this became another memorable wider annual lecture may I add that at wider in this building we will actually over the next two days hold a major conference on inclusive growth in Africa and elsewhere and the measurement and discussions on causes of poverty and inequality I hope that you will take a look at our website I hope that you might give it a try follow some of the deliberation and did you know that at the Recon website you can actually find all the latest about the effectiveness of foreign aid that we have published 90 working papers over the last eight months and also that there is a wider angle newsletter which actually once a month provides you with the latest about global development from a wider perspective and then you can actually also on a website find outputs studies, information news from no less than 11 ongoing projects on a range of issues international food prices climate change new development trends and methodologies industrial policy and global poverty and inequality now when the next wider annual lecture will take place we will have initiated on the first of January 2014 our next five year work program on transformation inclusion and sustainability I submit that those three areas, those three themes are fundamental in trying to realize the aspirations that we have heard about here and I do believe that approaching the various paradigms and the various models that are out there with those three areas in mind might give you some insight to what might work from the Nordic model and what might be more difficult to put into place please do join us, please engage with us and I'm happy to say that the deliberations today as well as the greeting from Amadeus Sen will be made available on the web, on the wider event site and also by the way at YouTube. Mr President the panel, thank you very much