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Publications (115)
Development aid by itself cannot ‘save the planet’. Yet, development aid and institutions have the potential to remain important catalytic actors in achieving developmental and global environmental objectives. Developing countries must be crucial players in successful climate change mitigation as...
Book Chapter
This paper investigates whether cyclical variation in women’s labour supply in Africa contributes to smoothing household consumption. We find little support for this hypothesis. Using comparable individual data on about 0.5 million women in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries merged with country level...
Book Chapter
The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of institutional reforms on the revival of African economies. We study the impact of positive changes in business environment indicators of the Doing Business project and the Economic Freedom Index of the Heritage Foundation on the private sector...
Book Chapter
This paper investigates some of the existing hypotheses regarding the transmission of different colonial legacies to modern day economic growth. The fact that different colonial strategies were pursued by different colonizers in various territories suggests possible ramifications for current...
Book Chapter
– Xenophobia in post-Apartheid South Africa
In May 2008, South Africa became the theatre of widespread violent attacks against undesirable ‘outsiders’. Over 60 were killed, hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands displaced. This analysis aims at identifying the characteristics of the victims in an attempt to portray the ‘alien’ using...
Book Chapter
– Aid, Democracy, and Instability from Trade
This study revisits the effect of aid on the quality of institutions and examines the effects of a major source of instability, namely terms-of-trade instability, on the quality of democracy. We take advantage of previous empirical findings which explain the role of aid in mitigating the adverse...
Book Chapter
– A Case Study of Liberia’s Telecommunication Laws
The telecommunications sector in Africa presents many exciting prospects to international investors—indeed many billion dollar projects are already underway across the continent. Many of the continent’s current problems can be traced to the exploitation it has experienced whilst ‘doing business’...
Book Chapter
– African Evidence from Panel Vector Autoregressive Framework
Using a panel vector autoregressive model this paper investigates the dynamic and endogeneous contribution of tourism to output based on a sample of 40 African countries for the period 1990–2006. Results from the study confirm tourism to be an important ingredient of African development although...
Book Chapter
Purposeful, well-targeted and successful transformation policies will be elusive for a country or region that does not understand the relative importance of its sectoral sources of growth. This study aims at eliciting our understanding in this respect by providing an assessment of the relative...
Book Chapter
– What Consequences for Economic Convergence?
This chapter examines the link between health indicators, environmental variables, and economic development, and the consequences of this relationship on economic convergence. In the early stage of economic development, the gain from income growth could be cancelled or mitigated by environmental...
Book Chapter
– Is Africa Different?
This chapter revisits the link between exchange rate regimes and trade in the context of Africa’s exchange rate arrangements. Applying an augmented gravity model that includes measures of currency unions and pegged regimes, the paper compares Africa’s experience with that of the world. Our results...
Book Chapter
– Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in an African Economy
Recent developments in policy initiatives as well as some current practical events have combined to put the spotlight on the issue of industrial embeddedness in sub-Saharan Africa. Though extant research documents some stylized facts, as determinants of its manifestations, their relevance to...
Recent years have seen a sustained research effort exploring the African development experience. The extant literature has offered a large set of explanations as to why the African development record has lagged behind that of other regions of the developing world. This new volume brings...
Working Paper
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The distinction between development assistance and climate finance is driven by an optic of compensation largely derived from the ‘polluter pays’ principle. For practical as well as conceptual reasons, this principle provides a weak basis for climate finance. The distinction also cuts against the...
The UNFCCC COP 17 Durban conference confirmed the need to reach an all-party-inclusive global climate agreement by 2015 as the successor of the Kyoto Protocol. Although this Durban ‘road map’ is promising, the international negotiation process for reaching such a deal is bound to be filled with...
One of the dual objectives of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is to assist host countries in achieving sustainable development. With various CDM indicators for 58 CDM host countries over the period 2005-2010, this paper empirically assesses whether CDM project development...
Working Paper
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Mozambique benefits from environmental aid-related funds, but it is still unclear whether donor commitments render directly into projects that are copiously implemented for the purposes stated and what aid flows have actually been doing and are doing in the area of aid and environment in Mozambique...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Tanzania
This paper provides an assessment of what aid has actually been doing in the area of environment in Tanzania through a critical review of the flows, modalities and management of aid. Focusing on the funding for environmental degradation projects, the study notes that budget expenditure allocation to...
Position Paper
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This position paper on Aid, Environment, and Climate Change, prepared under the UNU-WIDER ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid, is intended to improve the understanding of the role foreign aid has played and can help play in local and global environmental issues. The paper lays out the challenges brought on by climate change and the ‘public good’ nature of the environment, the existing responses to the challenges in the aid context, and suggestions for future directions for aid and research efforts in the task of helping developing countries in the mitigation...
Working Paper
pdf
– A Synthesis of Eight Case Studies
This study seeks to understand what aid flows have been doing to the environment in eight countries in Eastern, Western and Southern Africa. Total aid to these countries’ environmental sectors for the 2000s decade is about US$10.17 billion and bilateral aid has been on the rise. There seems to have...
Working Paper
pdf
– Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda
A new methodology, Tracking Under-Reported Financial Flows (TUFF), allows us to systematically gather open-source information—e.g. news reports, case studies, project inventories from embassy websites, and grant and loan data published by recipient governments—about Chinese development finance...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Botswana
Botswana has serious environmental problems which, if not addressed, will undermine the attainment of sustainable economic development. This study attempts to determine what aid flows have actually been doing with regard to the environment in Botswana. The results show that although both the...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Senegal
The paper reviews the dynamics of the financing based its analysis on the rich dataset of AidData ranging over 1993-2010, with around 9,077 observations on projects funded in Senegal by various multilateral as well as bilateral donors. The study started in the same year as the establishment of the...
Working Paper
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The main objective of the paper is to determine the actual aid flows that have an environmental focus in Burkina Faso. The environment literature highlights important environment issues in air, land and water, including deforestation, desertification, irreversible negative effects on biodiversity...
Working Paper
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– General Lessons and Bilateral Agreements of Norway
REDD+, when it officially became part of the international climate agenda in 2007, was an idea about payment to countries and projects for reducing emission from forests, with funding primarily from carbon markets. REDD+ has since become multi-objective; the policy focus has changed from payments...
Working Paper
pdf
– the Case of Kenya
We investigate allocations of foreign aid by donors to the environment sector in Kenya covering the period 2001-12. Our data are largely obtained from official government and global aid databases complemented with donor interviews. We find that donor funding remained significant with emphasis on...
Working Paper
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– How Past Environmental Aid Allocation Impacts Future Climate Aid
In this paper we update previous work that categorizes foreign aid projects in terms of their likely impact on the natural environment. We then document trends in the global distribution of environmental aid over time and show that environmental aid has increasingly focused on global environmental...
Working Paper
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In this paper we discuss aid and the environment in Ghana. Our analysis indicates that expenditure by the government of Ghana has increased consistently since 2000, with seven sectors weakly linked to the environment taking about 78.9 per cent of all government expenditure. Also, the rate of...
Research Brief
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Forest degradation remains a leading environmental problem, given the scale of forest loss and the crucial role of forests to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Initiatives from the climate change policy arena, especially REDD+, are opening new ways for a broader mainstreaming of forest...
Research Brief
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Development of green cities is one way to help address problems associated with climate change. Curitiba, Brazil, combines integrated sustainable urban planning and strong leadership, resulting in a reduced environmental impact since it began these policies in 1966. Tianjin City, China, emphasizes...
Displaying 32 of 115 results