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Publications (22)
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Efforts to realize the issue of development-focused Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been on-going for many years. Recently, however, the campaign first gained a new momentum immediately after the Asian financial crises with the new liquidity problems of...
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– Issues and Evidence
Remittances, after foreign direct investment, are currently the most important source of external finance to developing countries. Remittances surpass foreign aid, and tend to be more stable than such volatile capital flows as portfolio investment and international bank credit. Remittances are also...
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– Over-Arching Issues
In analysing proposals for new sources of development funding, there are several issues that arise across the board. What is the role of new sources in relation to existing overseas development assistance? Should we be seeking new sources that generate a double dividend? Can the key elements of a...
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This paper considers lessons from the practice of fiscal federalism for guidance on new approaches to development finance. Despite the fact that inter-regional redistribution in a federation relies on a central government with strong fiscal powers, the form of that redistribution can be used as a...
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This paper considers the role of global environmental taxes both as instruments for improving the global environment and as a source of revenue for funding economic development. It reviews the general case for environmental taxes and the particular issues that arise for the adoption of such taxes in...
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Charitable donations by private individuals and firms can help fund the Millennium Development Goals. What are the prospects for increasing donations for international development, whether from small-scale donors, the super-rich (as in the recent gifts by Bill Gates and Ted Turner), or the corporate...
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– A Critical Appraisal
The paper assesses the potential of currency transaction taxes (CTT, widely known as the Tobin tax), to raise revenue for global development. Though Tobin proposed and others assessed CTTs in terms of reducing exchange rate volatility and improving macroeconomic policy environments, this paper...
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The world lottery market now amounts to at least US$126 billion in sales. World market sales for all gaming products (public, charitable and commercial) total some US$1 trillion, of which Internet gambling accounts for US$32 billion. This paper assesses the prospects for harnessing this large and...
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– The UK HM Treasury-DFID Proposal to Increase External Finance to Developing Countries
The paper discusses the International Finance Facility (IFF), a joint HM Treasury–DFID proposal to increase development aid substantially for the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. The main conclusion of the paper is that the proposed IFF is a promising, forward-looking and...
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This paper defines a role for human rights and human rights workers in the discussion of humanitarian emergencies. The approach is to look at how human rights law, monitoring, and information can be useful in two ways: (1) to warn of an impending humanitarian emergency, and (2) as part of efforts to...
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– An Econometric Investigation into the Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, state violence, disease, hunger, and displacement. We emphasize that economic variables often become salient through...
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This paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange, irrespective of conventional public/private distinctions...
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– The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti
Towards the Abyss? The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti analyzes the various factors that have contributed to create a protracted humanitarian emergency situation in Haiti. The first section deals with the economic causes, the interplay between population growth, erosion and falling rural...
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– The Political Economy of Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. We find that stagnation and decline in real GDP, high income inequality, inflation...
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This diagnostic study explores the political conditions that are associated with humanitarian emergencies. It employs a risk rather than cause-effect methodology. Humanitarian emergencies are not random events. They occur most frequently in states having the following characteristics: i) more than...
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– Lessons from El Salvador
This paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are most likely to occur when growth is slow, negative, or falls far short of...
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