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From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
Book review on: T. Besley and T. Persson (2011). Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters.Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson embark on a new research agenda in their book ‘Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics...
Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery Escalating food prices in 2007-2008, climate change and land grabbing have woken the world up to the extraordinary...
Part of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the results of regional economic growth model estimations at multiple spatial scales using spatial panel data models. The spatial scales examined are minimum comparable areas, microregions, mesoregions and states...
This paper examines to what extent the central bank for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (BCEAO) has used interest rate policy in response to domestic economic developments. We show that while in the long run the BCEAO matches changes in...
The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of the recent development in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates, the matching function for...
Commodity price fluctuations have been troublesome in their destabilising effects on the foreign exchange earnings of developing countries. Recently, however, attention has been drawn to their role in transmitting inflation and in inducing...
This paper introduces a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal bivariate categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the...
The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro- and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature...
The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature...
The fisheries sector in sub-Saharan Africa has benefited from high and increasing amounts of foreign aid for over four decades. In the 1990s when evidence emerged that most stocks were overcapitalized and overfished, the effectiveness of fisheries...
The concept of scapegoating is frequently used to explain how opportunistic elites attempt to deflect blame onto vulnerable ethnic minorities, particularly during times of social turmoil. However, the notion of scapegoating is undertheorized in the...
This paper models the inter‐temporal allocation of foreign development aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG). A formal theoretical model of aid allocation is developed, in which aid to any one country is determined jointly with aid to all other recipient...
Part of Book Utility Privatization and Regulation
This paper relates Amartya Sen’s capability approach to the literature on equivalence scales. Synthetic indicators of well-being are constructed by adjusting individual incomes for differences in functionings. An exploratory comparative application...
This study econometrically evaluates the short-run impact of aid in small developing countries (SDCs) by applying a VAR model to study aid's impact on 'absorption' (increasing import demand) and 'spending' (increased domestic demand) across countries...
Bilateral trade of geographically distant countries is likely to be negatively affected by the distance separating them from their trading partners and positively affected by their remoteness, defined as the average weighted distance between two...
Aid is an important resource for developing countries. Many small island states (including those in the Pacific) are highly reliant on aid to supplement meagre government resources and other foreign capital inflows. This paper investigates the...
China’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-region income inequality in China. This paper discusses China...
The present study examines the degree to which income distribution affects the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, based on 1990s data for a sample of rural and urban sectors of African economies. Using the basic needs approach, an analysis...
Part of Book Understanding Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Book Understanding Small-Island Developing States
Part of Book Macroeconomic Policy in the Franc Zone
Part of Journal Special Issue Fragility and Development in Small Island Developing States
In the 1980s most of Sub-Saharan African countries (SSA) especially the HIPCs faced an unprecedented indebtedness. Different mechanisms of debt relief as well as economic reforms have been put in place with the objective of enabling these countries...
This paper analyses the relationship between income inequality and growth in transition economies. The distinct and complex dynamics adherent to these economies lead to the proposition of new econometric models in the paper. However, empirical...
Unlike existing studies, we adopt a multi-sectoral approach and consider the full range of climate projections. Biophysical damages are translated into economic costs using a dynamic economywide model. Our results for Vietnam indicate that the...