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Publications (52)
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– A New Perspective on the Transmission of HIV/AIDS
Public policy debates, about HIV and prevention policy, have tended to occupy one of two extreme positions derived from either rational choice and or structuralists theories. This paper argues that the concept of hope may offer a way through this policy and paradigmatic log-jam. Hope is an...
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The paucity of non-agricultural paid employment, and under utilization of female labour in Uganda, and other sub-Saharan African countries, is often seen to be the next major obstacle to further poverty reduction and development in the region. Despite this there have been few empirical...
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– Policy Lessons from Recent Experience
This paper investigates the macroeconomic challenges created by a surge in aid inflows. It develops an analytical framework for examining possible policy responses to increased aid, in terms of absorption and spending of aid—where the central bank controls absorption through monetary policy and the...
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– When Aid Volatility Matters and When It Does Not
In previous papers we have argued that aid is likely to mitigate the negative effects of external shocks on economic growth (i.e., aid is more effective in countries that are more vulnerable to external shocks). Recently an important debate has emerged about the possible negative effects of aid...
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We examine the properties of alternative monetary policy rules in response to large aid surges in low-income countries characterized by incomplete capital market integration and currency substitution. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that simple monetary rules that...
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– The Contest for Aid
Countries compete with one another for funds distributed by nongovernment organizations (NGOs). We examine the competition over poverty and governance conducted by a NGO in the allocation of its funds among potential recipient countries. The NGO in its decisionmaking process also takes into account...
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– Looking at the Aid-Social Capital-Growth Nexus
We examine the impact of institutional quality and social capital on aid effectiveness. We find strong evidence that social capital and institutions enhance aid effectiveness. Moreover, once we account for the role of social capital and institutions, the impact of policies tend to disappear. These...
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– Impact Pathways and Recent Evidence
The last two decades of the twentieth century recorded a slowdown in health gains and widespread increases in health inequality across and within countries. The paper explores the causes of such trends on the basis of five main mortality models. To do so, it regresses IMR/LEB on 15 determinants of...
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This paper analyses three issues in strategic donor-recipient interaction motivated by the complexity of the rationale underlying aid. The first is when we have several principals with conflicting objectives. Any one principal cannot offer high powered incentives to the agent to carry out their...
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This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem to...
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– An Intertemporal Analysis
This paper examines the welfare implications of foreign aid within the framework of a two-period, two-country model of international trade. It is up to the donor country to decide what fraction of any given aid package is to be made available for the recipient’s immediate, period-one consumption...
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– Incentives for a Pro-Poor Policy
We develop a theoretical model of foreign aid to analyse a method of disbursement of aid which induces the recipient government to follow a more pro-poor policy than it otherwise would do. In our two-period model, aid is given in the second period and the volume of it depends on the level of...
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– Evidence from Mexico
This paper uses a subjective wellbeing approach to study the role of household arrangements on the health satisfaction of an individual. It also studies the impact of household arrangements on health satisfaction across different income groups, by contrasting two main theories of the family: the...
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– A Quantile Regression Approach
Reducing child malnutrition is a key goal of most developing countries. To combat child malnutrition with the right set of interventions, policymakers need to have a better understanding of its economic, social and policy determinants. While there is a large literature that investigates the...
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The reduction of child mortality is one of the most universally accepted Millennium Goals. However, there is a significant debate on the means of reaching it and its realism with regard to the situation in most of the least developed countries. The recommendations made for the achievement of this...
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This paper describes approaches to the measurement and explanation of income-related inequality and inequity in health care financing, health care utilization and health and considers the applicability and the feasibility of these methods in low-income countries. Results from a comparative study of...
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The interaction between available individual and collective resources in the determination of health is largely ignored in the literature on the relationship between poverty and health in developing countries. We analyse the role public resources play in the perception that rural women in Morocco...
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This paper focuses on the determinants of infant and child mortality in Kenya. It specifically examines how infant and child mortality is related to the household’s environmental and socio-economic characteristics, such as mother’s education, source of drinking water, sanitation facility, type of...
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While we know a lot about how countries become prosperous, we have only begun to understand how aid contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction. The development record is mixed and no robust association between the volume of aid and development performance has been discovered. The limits of...
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The ultimate measure of aid effectiveness is how aid affects the lives of poor people in developing countries. The huge literature on aid’s macroeconomic impact has remarkably little to say on this topic, and less still in terms of practical advice to government officials and aid administrators on...
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The expected increase in aid to Africa will put a big challenge for public service delivery. Using a simultaneous equation model, this paper provides an analysis of the effects of the volume and volatility of aid on education, health, water and sanitation outcomes, taking also into account the...
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We argue in this paper that cancelling the debt of the poorest countries was a good thing, but that it should not imply that the debt instrument should be foregone. Debt and debt cancellations are indeed two complementary instruments which, if properly managed, perform better than either loans or...
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Are recent donor approaches compatible with a political understanding of policy processes in partner or recipient countries? This question is given increased urgency with the recent calls for and commitment to increasing financial flows, scaling-up of aid, and promoting donor coordination. Do these...
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– A Reflection on Aid Modalities and Transparency in Reporting, and a Review of Aid for Basic Social Services
The paper reflects on the potential of the OECD-DAC creditor reporting system to systematically capture flows of official development assistance (ODA) in support of realizing children’s rights. The growth in modalities for delivering aid, including sector programmes, sector wide approaches (SWAPs)...
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Japan has emerged in recent years as a leading donor country to African countries. At one level, Japan’s renewed assertiveness in providing foreign aid to Africa is on par with the more active approach by other donor countries. Some might argue that Japan’s motivations to lend capital and technical...
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– How to Reconcile the Two Approaches
In this paper we examine whether absorptive capacity can constitute sufficient justification for rejecting the proposal of a large aid increase to support the ‘big push’. We argue that the probability of a poverty trap exists for many countries, in particular the least developed countries (LDCs) and...
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– A Sector Perspective of Aid Allocation
We analyse the aid portfolio of various bilateral and multilateral donors, testing whether they have prioritized aid in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Employing Tobit models that combine sectorally disaggregated aid data with various indicators reflecting the situation of...
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– How Relevant is the Heterogeneity of Aid Flows and the Heterogeneity of Aid Recipients?
This paper examines whether foreign aid in education has a significant effect on growth. We take into consideration the heterogeneous nature of aid as well as the heterogeneity of aid recipients—we disaggregate the aid data into primary, secondary and higher education, and run separate regressions...
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– Evidence from a Panel of HIPCs
Substantial amounts of debt relief have been granted to a set of low-income countries, as an alternative aid modality. Although the theoretical case for debt relief is firmly established, only empirical analysis can show whether debt relief is indeed a (more) effective mode of aid delivery. We...
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– Seeking the Middle Ground in Aid-Dependent Low-Income Countries
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 most of the crucial accounting tasks must be...
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This paper argues that the reduction of horizontal inequalities (HIs) or inequalities between culturally defined groups should inform aid policy in heterogeneous countries with severe HIs. It shows how this would change aid allocation across countries, leading to more aid to heterogeneous countries...
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In this paper we focus on the relationship between remittance inflows and financial inclusion in developing countries. We present single equation estimates on remittances and financial inclusion, and system estimates in which economic growth is explained by e.g., financial inclusion, and financial...
Displaying 32 of 52 results