Caribbean Development Report, Volume II

The Caribbean Development Report is offered as a forum to the academic community, policymakers and researchers in the Caribbean. The framework for the Report is contained in the mandate given to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean to monitor and report on the implementation of major United Nations global agreements on social and economic development, and to support Caribbean governments in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The inaugural issue was produced in 2007.

This, the second volume of this refereed journal, was produced in December 2009 and contains seven articles by nine contributors. In the first paper, "Global economic crisis: CARICOM impacts and responses", Clive Thomas identifies the transmission channels through which the global financial and economic crisis unfolding since 2008 has affected CARICOM countries, the weaknesses and loopholes it has served to highlight, and national and subregional policy efforts to respond to the crisis. The second paper, "Human security and the financial crisis in the Caribbean", by Patsy Lewis, analyses the impact of the crisis on social and economic development in the Caribbean and demonstrates how the crisis has retarded or reversed progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The third paper, "The escalation in world food prices and its implications for the Caribbean" by Armando Mendoza and Roberto Machado, uses modelling techniques to identify the factors that have had the strongest influence on escalating food prices in the Caribbean. The fourth paper, "Gender and the Economic Partnership Agreement: An analysis of the potential gender effects of the CARIFORUM-EU EPA", by Jason Jackson and Judith Wedderburn, looks closely at the EPA from a gender perspective and recommends ways in which Caribbean governments might target policy initiatives to take advantage of the trade agreement with the European Union to promote development. The fifth paper, on "The status of Millennium Development Goals monitoring and reporting in selected Caribbean countries", by Karoline Schmid, examines current data collection and reporting structures in the Caribbean and recommends that statistical arrangements be given a strong and centralized mandate from Caribbean governments. The sixth paper focuses on climate change, an area of growing significance to the Caribbean region. In "The impact of climate change on the tourism sector in selected Caribbean countries", Sandra Sookram uses a mathematical model to estimate the cost to the Caribbean tourism economy of three climate change scenarios to the end of the century. The seventh paper, by Dillon Alleyne, "Is the payoff to overeducation smaller for Caribbean immigrants? Evidence from hierarchical models in the United States labour market" uses modelling techniques to focus on the returns to education of migrants from the Caribbean, an issue of significance to the Caribbean in terms of capturing returning skills and the contribution of remittances to GDP and development.

The final section of the Report contains the authors' biographies and guidelines to contributors on manuscript preparation and style.