The Poverty Reduction, Equity, and Growth Network’s (PEGNet) conference 2010 on Policies to foster and sustain equitable development in times of crises will be held at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Midrand, South Africa, 2-3 September 2010.

Conference Format

The Conference will provide a platform for high-level dialogue between development researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. The two conference days will feature parallel-sessions based on invited and contributed papers and project presentations. These will be complemented by a debate, a round-table discussion, and keynote speeches by renowned speakers from academia, economic policy and development practice. A total of about 30 contributed papers and projects based on author’s original work, are expected to be presented in the conference.

In addition, the PEGNet Best-Practice Prize will be awarded for the second time to best-practices in cooperation between researchers and practitioners. This call therefore asks for submission of papers as well as projects, programs and initiatives eligible for this prize.

Conference theme

This conference sets about finding policies that reduce vulnerabilities of the poor to shocks, sustain the socioeconomic balance and promote development that is equitable in times of growth and crisis alike. We are interested in high-quality papers as well as innovative projects, including comparative works that provide new insights on the scope of Policies to foster and sustain equitable development in times of crises. Possible sub-themes are:

• Insurance mechanisms
• Adaptation to climate change
• Escaping the informal-employment trap
• Migration and remittances
• ODA and shocks
• Income diversification

Best-practice award

An award will be granted to programmes, projects, and initiatives that have achieved effective interaction between research and practice. All initiatives that have proved to put research into action and have thereby fostered cooperation between development research and practice are encouraged to apply. Such initiatives can be development projects or programmes that have incorporated research tools into their design or research projects that have been particularly successful in translating their findings into policy and practice. Initiatives targeted at improving dialogue between researchers and practitioners are also encouraged to apply. The proposed projects do not necessarily have to be closely related to this year’s conference theme.

Selection procedures

For the best-practice award, a maximum of four projects will be selected by a committee on the basis of a three-page summary of the initiative’s objectives, the type of interaction between research and practice as well as its results. The preselected projects will be asked to submit one additional paper or report. At the conference, each nominated initiative will be presented and the winner of a prize of Euro 3000 will be selected by the committee.

Contributed papers and projects will be selected on the basis of papers or abstracts of about 500 words. Priority will be given to empirical research with clear implications for policy design and implementation. Furthermore, we encourage practitioners to present case studies and/or share their experiences from the field.

Please email your submissions to pegnet@ifw-kiel.de in a pdf or Word file and indicate ‘PEGNet Conference 2010’ in the subject heading. The submission deadline is 15 April, 2010. Notification of acceptance will be sent out in May 2010. The deadline for full paper submission and additional material for the Best Practice Award is July 15, 2010.

PEGNet is collaborating with DBSA to select a number of papers presented at the conference for possible inclusion in a special volume on poverty of Development Southern Africa, to be published after suitable revision in 2011.

For more information on the conference please refer to www.pegnet.ifw-kiel.de.

Organisers

The conference is co-organised by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Midrand, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).