Sustainable Shared Growth Policy Brief #2COMMUNITY CURRENCY IN A DISASTER: 3.11 TWICE REMEMBERED by Max Maquito and Joffre BalceApril 20, 2020Summary. The Policy Brief’s aim is to glean lessons from the March 2011 tsunami disaster that struck Japan that are relevant to the current pandemic. Buttressing the extensive hard infrastructure was the soft infrastructure embodied in the social capital of Japanese communities which contributed to the simultaneous diminished vulnerability and improved resiliency of these communities. This paper further focuses on community currencies as a policy instrument whose functions are to enhance social capital and hasten the movement of money, thereby contributing to reducing vulnerability and enhancing resiliency of communities.Policy Brief 

Sustainable Shared Growth Policy Brief #1“DISASTER VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCY: SUSTAINABLE SHARED GROWTH PRINCIPLES FROM A  TIME - SPACE - UNIVERSE CONTINUUM“ by Max Maquito and Joffre BalceApril 2, 2020Summary Unshared growth, i.e., growth without improvement in the distribution or income or wealth, makes us more vulnerable and less resilient towards natural disasters. It is of prime importance, therefore, that we build a society that leverages the principles of sustainable shared growth so that our policies span across generations and national boundaries, flatten the Kuznets curve of inequality, and further promote decentralization. It will call for innovative and even experimental approaches tempered not by a capricious obsession with theory but glimpses of success in history that can be used as components of an alternative universe. In such an alternative universe, we are likely to be spared the enormous hardships that we are now experiencing as our nation, nay, the world struggles to unite in its fight against an insidious and deadly enemy.Policy Brief