Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (September 2012)Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
We analyse policymakers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when...
After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Urban Governance and Service Delivery in sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Book Democratic Trajectories in Africa
Many public sector reforms in developing countries fail to make governments more functional. This is typically because reforms introduce new solutions that do not fit the contexts in which they are being placed. This situation reflects what has...
This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are ‘best in class’ in Africa...
This paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that...
The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region’s crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor...
This paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this...
This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource...
Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on...
Basic human rights recognize the intrinsic value of freedom, only not for the value of freedom itself, but also for its instrumental role enabling an individual to choose a bundle of commodities and wellbeing. The role of food, a basic necessity of...
Danielle Resnick In just a little over a month, policy makers will converge in Busan, South Korea for the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness...
Part of Book Food Insecurity, Vulnerability and Human Rights Failure
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Institutional Change and Economic Development
Part of Book Resource Abundance and Economic Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Policy and the Macroeconomic Management of Aid
The present paper adds to the already large existing literature on aid distribution as it runs an equation on bilateral aid allocation on a very rich dataset, covering 20 years (1980-99), 22 donors and 137 recipients, which permits a three...
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
Part of Book Foreign Aid for Development
Privatization, together with liberalization and deregulation, constituted the core of Mozambique's economic transition. Privatization in Mozambique has taken place on an unusually large scale in comparison with the rest of Africa. Privatization...
This paper assesses the preparation of Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (GPRS), paying particular attention to its likely influence on the institutionalisation of anti-poverty measures in the country’s political economy. After examining...
We analyse policy makers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability...
In this paper I analyze the economic incentives that govern the strategic relationship between the government and the independent media using a consistent analytical framework. The analysis focuses on the extent to which the ‘free’ press can act as a...