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118-552: Emma McCune (3 February 1964 – 24 November 1993) was a British foreign aid worker in Sudan who married then-guerrilla leader Riek Machar . She was killed when hit by a matatu in Kenya whilst expecting her first child. Emma McCune was born in Assam, India , in 1964 to British expatriates Julian and Maggie McCune. She was the oldest of four children. The family moved to Yorkshire, England, when Emma

236-427: A British spy and of using her influence over her husband to orchestrate a coup against him. McCune dismissed Garang’s accusations as ridiculous in an interview with The Sunday Times journalist Richard Ellis. After taking up with Machar, including using a UN-supplied typewriter to produce manifestos , she was fired by Street Kids International. She lived with Machar as war intensified and he split his faction away from

354-439: A biomedical approach which does not always account for the alternative beliefs and practices about health and well-being in the affected regions. This problem is rarely explored as most studies conducted are done from the lens of the donor or Westernized humanitarian organization rather than the recipient country's perspective. Discovering ways of encouraging locals to embrace bio-medicinal approaches while simultaneously respecting

472-555: A country facing a humanitarian crisis, girls and women can have access to the appropriate aid they need. Some of the unintended effects of food aid include labor and production disincentives , changes in recipients' food consumption patterns and natural resources use patterns, distortion of social safety nets, distortion of NGO operational activities, price changes, and trade displacement. These issues arise from targeting inefficacy and poor timing of aid programs. Food aid can harm producers by driving down prices of local products, whereas

590-450: A crucial role in a timely delivery of humanitarian aid. How aid is delivered can affect the quality and quantity of aid. Often in disaster situations, international aid agencies work in hand with local agencies. There can be different arrangements on the role these agencies play, and such arrangement affects the quality of hard and soft aid delivered. Securing access to humanitarian aid in post-disasters, conflicts, and complex emergencies

708-702: A definition of economics as a study of human behaviour, subject to and constrained by scarcity, which forces people to choose, allocate scarce resources to competing ends, and economise (seeking the greatest welfare while avoiding the wasting of scarce resources). According to Robbins: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Robbins' definition eventually became widely accepted by mainstream economists, and found its way into current textbooks. Although far from unanimous, most mainstream economists would accept some version of Robbins' definition, even though many have raised serious objections to

826-451: A distinct field. The book focused on determinants of national income in the short run when prices are relatively inflexible. Keynes attempted to explain in broad theoretical detail why high labour-market unemployment might not be self-correcting due to low " effective demand " and why even price flexibility and monetary policy might be unavailing. The term "revolutionary" has been applied to the book in its impact on economic analysis. During

944-555: A film to be directed by Tony Scott , but the family objected to a film based on the book, delaying its production. The film was still in development at the time of Scott's death in 2012; its fate remains unclear. Emma assisted more than 150 war children in Sudan including hip hop artist Emmanuel Jal and is the title subject of his song "Emma McCune" on his 2008 album Warchild . Aid worker While often used interchangeably, humanitarian aid and humanitarian assistance are distinct concepts. Humanitarian aid generally refers to

1062-495: A given people's culture and beliefs remains a major challenge for humanitarian aid organizations; in particular as organizations constantly enter new regions as crises occur. However, understanding how to provide aid cohesively with existing regional approaches is necessary in securing the local peoples' acceptance of the humanitarian aid's work. Aid is funded by donations from individuals, corporations, governments and other organizations. The funding and delivery of humanitarian aid

1180-480: A given situation, organizations frequently interact as competitors, which creates bottlenecks for treatment and supplies. A second limitation is how humanitarian organizations are focused on a specific disaster or epidemic, without a plan for whatever might come next; international organizations frequently enter a region, provide short term aid, and then exit without ensuring local capacity to maintain or sustain this medical care. Finally, humanitarian medical aid assumes

1298-607: A government-supported project could weaken the insurgents' position. Related findings of Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov further demonstrate that a successful community-driven development program increased support for the government in Afghanistan by exacerbating conflict in the short term, revealing an unintended consequence of the aid. Waste and corruption are hard to quantify, in part because they are often taboo subjects, but they appear to be significant in humanitarian aid. For example, it has been estimated that over $ 8.75  billion

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1416-418: A humanitarian aid organization would clash with a government's approach to the unfolding domestic conflict. In such cases, humanitarian aid organizations have sought out autonomy to extend help regardless of political or ethnic affiliation. Humanitarian medical aid as a sector possesses several limitations. First, multiple organizations often exist to solve the same problem. Rather than collaborating to address

1534-420: A lower relative cost of production, rather relying only on its own production. It has been termed a "fundamental analytical explanation" for gains from trade . Coming at the end of the classical tradition, John Stuart Mill (1848) parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between

1652-449: A more comprehensive theory of costs on the supply side. In the 20th century, neoclassical theorists departed from an earlier idea that suggested measuring total utility for a society, opting instead for ordinal utility , which posits behaviour-based relations across individuals. In microeconomics , neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making . An immediate example of this

1770-460: A more important role in mainstream economic theory. Also, heterogeneity among the economic agents, e.g. differences in income, plays an increasing role in recent economic research. Other schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practised at and disseminated from well-defined groups of academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Freiburg School ,

1888-763: A perceived dependency syndrome associated with freely distributed food. However, poorly designed FFW programs may cause more risk of harming local production than the benefits of free food distribution. In structurally weak economies, FFW program design is not as simple as determining the appropriate wage rate. Empirical evidence from rural Ethiopia shows that higher-income households had excess labor and thus lower (not higher as expected) value of time, and therefore allocated this labor to FFW schemes in which poorer households could not afford to participate due to labor scarcity. Similarly, FFW programs in Cambodia have shown to be an additional, not alternative, source of employment and that

2006-586: A proportion of the value their work had created. Marxian economics was further developed by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938)'s The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx and The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) , Rudolf Hilferding 's (1877–1941) Finance Capital , Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)'s The Development of Capitalism in Russia and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism , and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919)'s The Accumulation of Capital . At its inception as

2124-409: A rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant diminishing returns to labour. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from rising above the subsistence level. Economist Julian Simon has criticised Malthus's conclusions. While Adam Smith emphasised production and income, David Ricardo (1817) focused on

2242-702: A result. This was a result of grain food aid inflows increasing the availability of low-cost inputs to the informal distilling industry. Recent research suggests that patterns of food aid distribution may inadvertently affect the natural environment, by changing consumption patterns and by inducing locational change in grazing and other activities. A pair of studies in Northern Kenya found that food aid distribution seems to induce greater spatial concentration of livestock around distribution points, causing localized rangeland degradation, and that food aid provided as whole grain requires more cooking, and thus more fuelwood

2360-641: A senior commander in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army , in 1989 through her role as an aid worker in Sudan. They were instantly attracted to one another despite Machar already having a Sudanese wife , Angela, who was living in England with the couple’s three children at the time. In June 1991, McCune wed Machar in Nasir, Sudan . The wedding happened amid quarreling between Machar, SPLA chairman John Garang and other SPLA leaders. Garang accused Emma of being

2478-469: A set of stable preferences, a definite overall guiding objective, and the capability of making a choice. There exists an economic problem, subject to study by economic science, when a decision (choice) is made by one or more players to attain the best possible outcome. Keynesian economics derives from John Maynard Keynes , in particular his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which ushered in contemporary macroeconomics as

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2596-409: A single tax on income of land owners. In reaction against copious mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire , which called for minimal government intervention in the economy. Adam Smith (1723–1790) was an early economic theorist. Smith was harshly critical of the mercantilists but described the physiocratic system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps

2714-525: A small portion of their diet. Massive shipments of wheat and rice into the West African Sahel during the food crises of the mid-1970s and mid-1980s were widely believed to stimulate a shift in consumer demand from indigenous coarse grains – millet and sorghum – to western crops such as wheat . During the 2000 drought in northern Kenya , the price of changaa (a locally distilled alcohol) fell significantly and consumption seems to have increased as

2832-452: A social science, economics was defined and discussed at length as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth by Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (1803). These three items were considered only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution. Say's definition has survived in part up to

2950-435: A sought after end). Some subsequent comments criticised the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields. There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for

3068-503: A statistically significan large increase in casualties, as compared to other municipalities who were not part of the CDD. as a result, casualties suffered by government forces from insurgent-initiated attacks increased significantly. These results are consistent with other examples of humanitarian aid exacerbating civil conflict. One explanation is that insurgents attempt to sabotage CDD programs for political reasons – successful implementation of

3186-442: A synthesis emerged by the 2000s, often given the name the new neoclassical synthesis . It integrated the rational expectations and optimizing framework of the new classical theory with a new Keynesian role for nominal rigidities and other market imperfections like imperfect information in goods, labour and credit markets. The monetarist importance of monetary policy in stabilizing the economy and in particular controlling inflation

3304-584: A target for armed forces, especially in countries where the ruling government has limited control outside of the capital. Accounts from Somalia in the early 1990s indicate that between 20 to 80 percent of all food aid was stolen, looted, or confiscated. In the former Yugoslavia , the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) lost up to 30 percent of the total value of aid to Serbian armed forces. On top of that 30 percent, bribes were given to Croatian forces to pass their roadblocks in order to reach Bosnia . The value of

3422-456: A wide range of services, including but not limited to, the delivery of food, water, shelter, medical care, and protection services, and is delivered amidst challenging and often dangerous conditions, with the goal of reaching those most in need regardless of their location, political affiliation, or status. Aid workers are people who are distributed internationally to do humanitarian aid work. The total number of humanitarian aid workers around

3540-464: Is a major concern for humanitarian actors. To win assent for interventions, aid agencies often espouse the principles of humanitarian impartiality and neutrality . However, gaining secure access often involves negotiation and the practice of humanitarian diplomacy. In the arena of negotiations, humanitarian diplomacy is ostensibly used by humanitarian actors to try to persuade decision makers and leaders to act, at all times and in all circumstances, in

3658-421: Is a term for the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the know-how of an οἰκονομικός ( oikonomikos ), or "household or homestead manager". Derived terms such as "economy" can therefore often mean "frugal" or "thrifty". By extension then, "political economy" was the way to manage a polis or state. There are a variety of modern definitions of economics ; some reflect evolving views of

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3776-438: Is also applied to such diverse subjects as crime , education , the family , feminism , law , philosophy , politics , religion , social institutions , war , science , and the environment . The earlier term for the discipline was "political economy", but since the late 19th century, it has commonly been called "economics". The term is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek οἰκονομία ( oikonomia ) which

3894-477: Is common. In recent years, a number of concerns have been raised about the mental health of aid workers. The most prevalent issue faced by humanitarian aid workers is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Adjustment to normal life again can be a problem, with feelings such as guilt being caused by the simple knowledge that international aid workers can leave a crisis zone, whilst nationals cannot. A 2015 survey conducted by The Guardian , with aid workers of

4012-485: Is consumed, stimulating local deforestation . There are different kinds of medical humanitarian aid, including: providing medical supplies and equipment; sending professionals to an affected region; and long-term training for local medical staff. Such aid emerged when international organizations stepped in to respond to the need of national governments for global support and partnership to address natural disasters, wars, and other crises that impact people's health. Often,

4130-767: Is ever-increasing and has long outstripped the financial resources available. The Central Emergency Response Fund was created at the 2005 Central Emergency Response Fund at the United Nations General Assembly. Humanitarian aid spans a wide range of activities, including providing food aid, shelter, education, healthcare or protection . The majority of aid is provided in the form of in-kind goods or assistance, with cash and vouchers constituting only 6% of total humanitarian spending. However, evidence has shown how cash transfers can be better for recipients as it gives them choice and control, they can be more cost-efficient and better for local markets and economies. It

4248-463: Is important to note that humanitarian aid is not only delivered through aid workers sent by bilateral, multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations. Actors like the affected people themselves, civil society, local informal first-responders, civil society, the diaspora, businesses, local governments, military, local and international non-governmental organizations all play

4366-574: Is increasingly international, making it much faster, more responsive, and more effective in coping to major emergencies affecting large numbers of people (e.g. see Central Emergency Response Fund ). The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) coordinates the international humanitarian response to a crisis or emergency pursuant to Resolution 46/182 of the United Nations General Assembly . The need for aid

4484-801: Is no clear consensus on the trade-offs between speed and control, especially in emergency situations when the humanitarian imperative of saving lives and alleviating suffering may conflict with the time and resources required to minimise corruption risks. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have highlighted the need to tackle corruption with, but not limited to, the following methods: Reports of sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian response have been reported following humanitarian interventions in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2002, in Central African Republic and in

4602-413: Is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it

4720-598: Is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics. Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathisers. Modern mainstream economics builds on neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalise earlier analysis, such as econometrics , game theory , analysis of market failure and imperfect competition , and

4838-404: Is thus important for humanitarian actors, such as the United Nations, to include challenges specific to women in their humanitarian response. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee provides guidelines for humanitarian actors on how be inclusive of gender as a factor when delivering humanitarian aid. It recommends agencies to collect data disaggregated by sex and age to better understand which group of

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4956-607: Is viewed as basic elements within economies , including individual agents and markets , their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings , and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production , such as labour , capital , land , and enterprise , inflation , economic growth , and public policies that have impact on these elements . It also seeks to analyse and describe

5074-514: The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the United Nations (UN) is responsible for coordination responses to emergencies. It taps to the various members of Inter-Agency Standing Committee , whose members are responsible for providing emergency relief. The four UN entities that have primary roles in delivering humanitarian aid are United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),

5192-747: The School of Lausanne , the Stockholm school and the Chicago school of economics . During the 1970s and 1980s mainstream economics was sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago school approach. Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their historical appearance in

5310-525: The Sphere Project ". It comprises nine core standards, which are complemented by detailed guidelines and indicators. Socioeconomics Economics ( / ˌ ɛ k ə ˈ n ɒ m ɪ k s , ˌ iː k ə -/ ) is a social science that studies the production , distribution , and consumption of goods and services . Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what

5428-709: The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP). According to the Global Humanitarian Overview of OCHA, nearly 300 million people need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2024, or 1 out of 27 people worldwide. In 2024, the estimated global humanitarian response requirements amount to approximately US$ 46.4 billion, targeting around 188 million of

5546-433: The macroeconomics of high unemployment. Gary Becker , a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, described the approach he favoured as "combin[ing the] assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences , and market equilibrium , used relentlessly and unflinchingly." One commentary characterises the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to

5664-467: The neoclassical model of economic growth for analysing long-run variables affecting national income . Neoclassical economics studies the behaviour of individuals , households , and organisations (called economic actors, players, or agents), when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends. Agents are assumed to act rationally, have multiple desirable ends in sight, limited resources to obtain these ends,

5782-415: The societal to the microeconomic level: Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. Lionel Robbins (1932) developed implications of what has been termed "[p]erhaps the most commonly accepted current definition of

5900-400: The "choice process and the type of social interaction that [such] analysis involves." The same source reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which

6018-486: The 1970s and 1980s, when several major central banks followed a monetarist-inspired policy, but was later abandoned because the results were unsatisfactory. A more fundamental challenge to the prevailing Keynesian paradigm came in the 1970s from new classical economists like Robert Lucas , Thomas Sargent and Edward Prescott . They introduced the notion of rational expectations in economics, which had profound implications for many economic discussions, among which were

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6136-527: The 1980s, and the prevention of relief aid in the Tigray War of 2020–2021 by the Abiy Ahmed Ali regime of Ethiopia was again widely condemned. Humanitarian aid in conflict zones is the provision of emergency assistance and support to individuals and communities affected by armed conflict, with the aim of alleviating suffering, maintaining human dignity, and preserving life. This type of aid encompasses

6254-513: The 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and

6372-513: The British organization Volunteer Services Overseas. After reluctantly returning to England in 1988 McCune once again returned to Sudan in 1989 to work for the UNICEF -funded Canadian organisation Street Kids International , which founded or re-opened more than 100 village schools in the country's south. McCune spent much of the late 1980s in the south in the midst of war and famine. McCune met Riek Machar,

6490-560: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2021 reporting on a Racial Equity Index report indicated that just under two-thirds of aid workers have experienced racism and 98% of survey respondents witnessed racism. Countries or war parties that prevent humanitarian relief are generally under unanimous criticism. Such was the case for the Derg regime, preventing relief to the population of Tigray in

6608-605: The Global Development Professionals Network, revealed that 79 percent experienced mental health issues. Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent are among the list of protected persons under international humanitarian law that grant them immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and become more frequent since

6726-633: The Lendu (opposition of Hema). Humanitarian aid workers have acknowledged the threat of stolen aid and have developed strategies for minimizing the amount of theft en route. However, aid can fuel conflict even if successfully delivered to the intended population as the recipient populations often include members of rebel groups or militia groups , or aid is "taxed" by such groups. Academic research emphatically demonstrates that on average food aid promotes civil conflict. Namely, increase in US food aid leads to an increase in

6844-578: The Nigeria-Biafra civil war in the late 1960s, where the rebel leader Odumegwu Ojukwu only allowed aid to enter the region of Biafra if it was shipped on his planes. These shipments of humanitarian aid helped the rebel leader to circumvent the siege on Biafra placed by the Nigerian government. These stolen shipments of humanitarian aid caused the Biafran civil war to last years longer than it would have without

6962-629: The United States food aid promoted civil conflict in recipient countries on average. An increase in United States' wheat aid increased the duration of armed civil conflicts in recipient countries, and ethnic polarization heightened this effect. However, since academic research on aid and conflict focuses on the role of aid in post-conflict settings, the aforementioned finding is difficult to contextualize. Nevertheless, research on Iraq shows that "small-scale [projects], local aid spending ... reduces conflict by creating incentives for average citizens to support

7080-461: The aid, claim experts. The most well-known instances of aid being seized by local warlords in recent years come from Somalia , where food aid is funneled to the Shabab, a Somali militant group that controls much of Southern Somalia. Moreover, reports reveal that Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and act as important power brokers, arming opposition groups with the profits made from

7198-407: The analysis of wealth: how wealth is created (production), distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow. But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it (as a sought after end ), generates both cost and benefits; and, resources (human life and other costs) are used to attain the goal. If

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7316-479: The area of inquiry or object of inquiry rather than the methodology. In the biology department, it is not said that all biology should be studied with DNA analysis. People study living organisms in many different ways, so some people will perform DNA analysis, others might analyse anatomy, and still others might build game theoretic models of animal behaviour. But they are all called biology because they all study living organisms. According to Ha Joon Chang, this view that

7434-443: The author believes economics is evolving, or should evolve. Many economists including nobel prize winners James M. Buchanan and Ronald Coase reject the method-based definition of Robbins and continue to prefer definitions like those of Say, in terms of its subject matter. Ha-Joon Chang has for example argued that the definition of Robbins would make economics very peculiar because all other sciences define themselves in terms of

7552-517: The colonies. Physiocrats , a group of 18th-century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Physiocrats believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth. Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with

7670-488: The design of modern monetary policy and are now standard workhorses in most central banks. After the 2007–2008 financial crisis , macroeconomic research has put greater emphasis on understanding and integrating the financial system into models of the general economy and shedding light on the ways in which problems in the financial sector can turn into major macroeconomic recessions. In this and other research branches, inspiration from behavioural economics has started playing

7788-506: The distribution of income among landowners, workers, and capitalists. Ricardo saw an inherent conflict between landowners on the one hand and labour and capital on the other. He posited that the growth of population and capital, pressing against a fixed supply of land, pushes up rents and holds down wages and profits. Ricardo was also the first to state and prove the principle of comparative advantage , according to which each country should specialise in producing and exporting goods in that it has

7906-464: The economy can and should be studied in only one way (for example by studying only rational choices), and going even one step further and basically redefining economics as a theory of everything, is peculiar. Questions regarding distribution of resources are found throughout the writings of the Boeotian poet Hesiod and several economic historians have described Hesiod as the "first economist". However,

8024-417: The erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack. The humanitarian community has initiated a number of interagency initiatives to improve accountability, quality and performance in humanitarian action. Four of

8142-630: The first large-scale macroeconometric model , applying the Keynesian thinking systematically to the US economy . Immediately after World War II, Keynesian was the dominant economic view of the United States establishment and its allies, Marxian economics was the dominant economic view of the Soviet Union nomenklatura and its allies. Monetarism appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, its intellectual leader being Milton Friedman . Monetarists contended that monetary policy and other monetary shocks, as represented by

8260-536: The following decades, many economists followed Keynes' ideas and expanded on his works. John Hicks and Alvin Hansen developed the IS–LM model which was a simple formalisation of some of Keynes' insights on the economy's short-run equilibrium. Franco Modigliani and James Tobin developed important theories of private consumption and investment , respectively, two major components of aggregate demand . Lawrence Klein built

8378-509: The global economy . Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics , describing "what is", and normative economics , advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics ; between rational and behavioural economics ; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics . Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, including business , finance , cybersecurity , health care , engineering and government . It

8496-597: The goal of which is to ensure migrants and refugees retain access to basic goods and services and the labour market. Basic needs, including access to shelter, clean water, and child protection, are supplemented by the UN's efforts to facilitate social integration and legal regularization for displaced individuals. Since the 2010 Haiti Earthquake , the institutional and operational focus of humanitarian aid has been on leveraging technology to enhance humanitarian action, ensuring that more formal relationships are established, and improving

8614-416: The government in subtle ways." Similarly, another study also shows that aid flows can "reduce conflict because increasing aid revenues can relax government budget constraints, which can [in return] increase military spending and deter opposing groups from engaging in conflict." Thus, the impact of humanitarian aid on conflict may vary depending upon the type and mode in which aid is received, and, inter alia,

8732-424: The growth in the money stock, was an important cause of economic fluctuations, and consequently that monetary policy was more important than fiscal policy for purposes of stabilisation . Friedman was also skeptical about the ability of central banks to conduct a sensible active monetary policy in practice, advocating instead using simple rules such as a steady rate of money growth. Monetarism rose to prominence in

8850-463: The importance of various market failures for the functioning of the economy, as had Keynes. Not least, they proposed various reasons that potentially explained the empirically observed features of price and wage rigidity , usually made to be endogenous features of the models, rather than simply assumed as in older Keynesian-style ones. After decades of often heated discussions between Keynesians, monetarists, new classical and new Keynesian economists,

8968-586: The incidence of armed civil conflict in the recipient country. Another correlation demonstrated is food aid prolonging existing conflicts, specifically among countries with a recent history of civil conflict. However, this does not find an effect on conflict in countries without a recent history of civil conflict. Moreover, different types of international aid other than food which is easily stolen during its delivery, namely technical assistance and cash transfers, can have different effects on civil conflict. Community-driven development (CDD) programs have become one of

9086-512: The interaction between formal humanitarian organizations such as the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and informal volunteer and technological communities known as digital humanitarians . The recent rise in Big Data , high-resolution satellite imagery and new platforms powered by advanced computing have already prompted the development of crisis mapping to help humanitarian organizations make sense of

9204-484: The interest of vulnerable people and with full respect for fundamental humanitarian principles . However, humanitarian diplomacy is also used by state actors as part of their foreign policy. The UN implements a multifaceted approach to assist migrants and refugees throughout their relocation process. This includes children's integration into the local education system, food security, and access to health services. The approach also encompasses humanitarian transportation,

9322-603: The larger movement. At one point they fled a machine-gun attack. In 1993, after becoming pregnant, she moved to Nairobi; she and her unborn child died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya. Emma's mother, Maggie McCune, published her story in Till the Sun Grows Cold . Journalist Deborah Scroggins wrote an unauthorised biography of her, Emma's War . "In my heart, I'm Sudanese," she once said, according to Scroggins. Scroggins' depiction of

9440-424: The local socio-economic, cultural, historical, geographical and political conditions in the recipient countries. International aid organizations identify theft by armed forces on the ground as a primary unintended consequence through which food aid and other types of humanitarian aid promote conflict. Food aid usually has to be transported across large geographic territories and during the transportation it becomes

9558-449: The market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene. Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it". Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter

9676-437: The most famous passages in all economics," Smith represents every individual as trying to employ any capital they might command for their own advantage, not that of the society, and for the sake of profit, which is necessary at some level for employing capital in domestic industry, and positively related to the value of produce. In this: He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he

9794-507: The most popular tools for delivering development aid. In 2012, the World Bank supported 400 CDD programs in 94 countries, valued at US$ 30 billion. Academic research scrutinizes the effect of community-driven development programs on civil conflict. The Philippines ' flagship development program KALAHI-CIDSS is concluded to have led to an increase in violent conflict in the country. After the program's initiation, some municipalities experienced

9912-530: The most vulnerable people in 69 countries. The three major drivers of humanitarian needs worldwide are conflicts, climate-related disasters, and economic factors. Food aid is a type of aid whereby food that is given to countries in urgent need of food supplies, especially if they have just experienced a natural disaster. Food aid can be provided by importing food from the donor, buying food locally, or providing cash. The welfare impacts of any food aid-induced changes in food prices are decidedly mixed, underscoring

10030-610: The most widely known initiatives are, ALNAP, the CHS Alliance , the Sphere Project and the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS). Representatives of these initiatives began meeting together on a regular basis in 2003 in order to share common issues and harmonise activities where possible. The Sphere Project handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, which

10148-503: The pessimistic analysis of Malthus (1798). John Stuart Mill (1844) delimited the subject matter further: The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object. Alfred Marshall provided a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics (1890) that extended analysis beyond wealth and from

10266-423: The population is in need of what type of aid. In recent years, the United Nations have been using sex and age disaggregated data more and more, consulting with gender specialists. In the assessment phase, several UN agencies meet to compile data and work on a humanitarian response plan. Throughout the plans. women specific challenges are listed and sex and age disaggregated data are used so when they deliver aid to

10384-483: The present, modified by substituting the word "wealth" for "goods and services" meaning that wealth may include non-material objects as well. One hundred and thirty years later, Lionel Robbins noticed that this definition no longer sufficed, because many economists were making theoretical and philosophical inroads in other areas of human activity. In his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science , he proposed

10502-409: The price of a commodity. Other classical economists presented variations on Smith, termed the ' labour theory of value '. Classical economics focused on the tendency of any market economy to settle in a final stationary state made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size . Marxist (later, Marxian) economics descends from classical economics and it derives from

10620-469: The producers are not themselves beneficiaries of food aid. Unintentional harm occurs when food aid arrives or is purchased at the wrong time, when food aid distribution is not well-targeted to food-insecure households, and when the local market is relatively poorly integrated with broader national, regional and global markets. Food aid can drive down local or national food prices in at least three ways. Beyond labor disincentive effects , food aid can have

10738-585: The provision of immediate, short-term relief in crisis situations, such as food, water, shelter, and medical care. Humanitarian assistance, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities, including longer-term support for recovery, rehabilitation, and capacity building. Humanitarian aid is distinct from development aid , which seeks to address underlying socioeconomic factors. Humanitarian aid can come from either local or international communities through international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). In reaching out to international communities,

10856-429: The purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. The publication of Adam Smith 's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, has been described as "the effective birth of economics as a separate discipline." The book identified land, labour, and capital as the three factors of production and the major contributors to a nation's wealth, as distinct from the physiocratic idea that only agriculture

10974-629: The reality that it is impossible to generate only positive intended effects from an international aid program. Food aid that is relatively inappropriate to local uses can distort consumption patterns. Food aid is usually exported from temperate climate zones and is often different than the staple crops grown in recipient countries, which usually have a tropical climate . The logic of food export inherently entails some effort to change consumers' preferences, to introduce recipients to new foods and thereby stimulate demand for foods with which recipients were previously unfamiliar or which otherwise represent only

11092-457: The recipient countries. Aid stealing is one of the prime ways in which conflict is promoted by humanitarian aid. Aid can be seized by armed groups, and even if it does reach the intended recipients, "it is difficult to exclude local members of a local militia group from being direct recipients if they are also malnourished and qualify to receive aid." Furthermore, analyzing the relationship between conflict and food aid, recent research shows that

11210-412: The scope and method of economics, emanating from that definition. A body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier " political economy ". This corresponded to the influence on

11328-486: The so-called Lucas critique and the presentation of real business cycle models . During the 1980s, a group of researchers appeared being called New Keynesian economists , including among others George Akerlof , Janet Yellen , Gregory Mankiw and Olivier Blanchard . They adopted the principle of rational expectations and other monetarist or new classical ideas such as building upon models employing micro foundations and optimizing behaviour, but simultaneously emphasised

11446-444: The source of the word economy. Joseph Schumpeter described 16th and 17th century scholastic writers, including Tomás de Mercado , Luis de Molina , and Juan de Lugo , as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary , interest , and value theory within a natural-law perspective. Two groups, who later were called "mercantilists" and "physiocrats", more directly influenced

11564-406: The state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Jean-Baptiste Say (1803), distinguishing the subject matter from its public-policy uses, defined it as the science of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth . On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle (1849) coined " the dismal science " as an epithet for classical economics , in this context, commonly linked to

11682-520: The stolen aid" Rwandan government appropriation of food aid in the early 1990s was so problematic that aid shipments were canceled multiple times. In Zimbabwe in 2003, Human Rights Watch documented examples of residents being forced to display ZANU-PF Party membership cards before being given government food aid. In eastern Zaire , leaders of the Hema ethnic group allowed the arrival of international aid organizations only upon agreement not give aid to

11800-570: The stolen or lost provisions can exceed the value of the food aid alone since convoy vehicles and telecommunication equipment are also stolen. MSF Holland, international aid organization operating in Chad and Darfur , underscored the strategic importance of these goods, stating that these "vehicles and communications equipment have a value beyond their monetary worth for armed actors, increasing their capacity to wage war" A famous instance of humanitarian aid unintentionally helping rebel groups occurred during

11918-408: The subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences . Neoclassical economics systematically integrated supply and demand as joint determinants of both price and quantity in market equilibrium, influencing the allocation of output and income distribution. It rejected the classical economics' labour theory of value in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and

12036-402: The subject or different views among economists. Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1776) defined what was then called political economy as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as: a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply

12154-471: The subject": Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. Robbins described the definition as not classificatory in "pick[ing] out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity ." He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on

12272-822: The subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe. Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing inexpensive raw materials to be used in manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit manufacturing in

12390-501: The unintended consequence of discouraging household-level production. Poor timing of aid and FFW wages that are above market rates cause negative dependency by diverting labor from local private uses, particularly if FFW obligations decrease labor on a household's own enterprises during a critical part of the production cycle. This type of disincentive impacts not only food aid recipients but also producers who sell to areas receiving food aid flows. FFW programs are often used to counter

12508-714: The vast volume and velocity of information generated during disasters. For example, crowdsourcing maps (such as OpenStreetMap ) and social media messages in Twitter were used during the 2010 Haiti Earthquake and Hurricane Sandy to trace leads of missing people, infrastructure damages and raise new alerts for emergencies. Even prior to a humanitarian crisis , gender differences exist. Women have limited access to paid work , are at risk of child marriage , and are more exposed to Gender based violence , such as rape and domestic abuse. Conflict and natural disasters exacerbate women's vulnerabilities. When delivering humanitarian aid, it

12626-430: The very poor rarely participate due to labor constraints. In addition to post-conflict settings, a large portion of aid is often directed at countries currently undergoing conflicts. However, the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, particularly food aid, in conflict-prone regions has been criticized in recent years. There have been accounts of humanitarian aid being not only inefficacious but actually fuelling conflicts in

12744-467: The war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors (assuming they are rational) may never go to war (a decision ) but rather explore other alternatives. Economics cannot be defined as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of each of those subjects (they all use scarce resources to attain

12862-505: The word Oikos , the Greek word from which the word economy derives, was used for issues regarding how to manage a household (which was understood to be the landowner, his family, and his slaves ) rather than to refer to some normative societal system of distribution of resources, which is a more recent phenomenon. Xenophon , the author of the Oeconomicus , is credited by philologues for being

12980-460: The work of Karl Marx . The first volume of Marx's major work, Das Kapital , was published in 1867. Marx focused on the labour theory of value and theory of surplus value . Marx wrote that they were mechanisms used by capital to exploit labour. The labour theory of value held that the value of an exchanged commodity was determined by the labour that went into its production, and the theory of surplus value demonstrated how workers were only paid

13098-722: The world has been calculated by ALNAP , a network of agencies working in the Humanitarian System, as 210,800 in 2008. This is made up of roughly 50% from NGOs, 25% from the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and 25% from the UN system. In 2010, it was reported that the humanitarian fieldworker population increased by approximately 6% per year over the previous 10 years. Aid workers are exposed to tough conditions and have to be flexible, resilient, and responsible in an environment that humans are not psychologically supposed to deal with, in such severe conditions that trauma

13216-404: The young British aid worker is complicated and often critical. McCune is depicted as a woman willing to bravely confront military warlords for help allowing Sudanese children to be schooled in their villages but later, after marrying that same warlord, is able to deny to herself the corruption and horrific violence resulting from her husband's civil war struggle. The book had been optioned for

13334-569: Was 2 years old in 1966. She attended Covent of the Assumption in Richmond, England. She studied art and art history from 1984 to 1986 at Oxford Polytechnic. There she became interested in Africa. Emma later attended SOAS University of London . In 1985 Emma flew to Australia and back in a single-engined light aircraft with her friend Bill Hall. McCune went to war-torn Sudan in 1987 at age 23 to teach for

13452-542: Was lost to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Non-governmental organizations have in recent years made great efforts to increase participation, accountability and transparency in dealing with aid, yet humanitarian assistance remains a poorly understood process to those meant to be receiving it—much greater investment needs to be made into researching and investing in relevant and effective accountability systems. However, there

13570-421: Was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1798) used the concept of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Human population , he argued, tended to increase geometrically, outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of

13688-702: Was produced by a coalition of leading non-governmental humanitarian agencies, lists the following principles of humanitarian action: Another humanitarian standard used is the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS). It was approved by the CHS Technical Advisory Group in 2014, and has since been endorsed by many humanitarian actors such as "the Boards of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), People in Aid and

13806-892: Was productive. Smith discusses potential benefits of specialisation by division of labour , including increased labour productivity and gains from trade , whether between town and country or across countries. His "theorem" that "the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market" has been described as the "core of a theory of the functions of firm and industry " and a "fundamental principle of economic organization." To Smith has also been ascribed "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics" and foundation of resource-allocation theory—that, under competition , resource owners (of labour, land, and capital) seek their most profitable uses, resulting in an equal rate of return for all uses in equilibrium (adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training and unemployment). In an argument that includes "one of

13924-437: Was recognised as well as the traditional Keynesian insistence that fiscal policy could also play an influential role in affecting aggregate demand . Methodologically, the synthesis led to a new class of applied models, known as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium or DSGE models, descending from real business cycles models, but extended with several new Keynesian and other features. These models proved useful and influential in

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