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Publications (33)
Experimental studies using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a powerful tool in policy analysis. They have been sometimes hailed as the best means of identifying ‘what works’ in development policy. However, it would be unwise to rely solely on findings from RCTs to guide policy. While RCTs...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A Porous Dialectic
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Better Policies? Better Politics?
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
In recent years, experimental methods have been both highly celebrated, and roundly criticized, as a means of addressing core questions in the social sciences. They have received particular attention in the analysis of development interventions. The studies in this special issue push beyond...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Opportunities and Challenges
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Definitions and Diagrams
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Working Paper
pdf
Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations, often without consent, sometimes with...
Blog
– Experimental and Non-experimental Approaches
24 September 2013 Rachel M. Gisselquist and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa UNU-WIDER's ReCom programme is centred around four core questions: what works, what could work, what is scalable, and what is transferrable in foreign aid? One of the first challenges in addressing these questions is a methodological...
Working Paper
pdf
– Definitions and Diagrams
The fundamental problem of external validity is not to generalize from one experiment, so much as to experimentally test generalizable theories. That is, theories that explain the systematic variation of causal effects across contexts. Here we show how the graphical language of causal diagrams can...
Working Paper
pdf
In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in development policy. This paper focuses on a core topic in...
Research Brief
pdf
– Crucial for the Spread of Social Protection Programmes
Evaluations of social protection programmes have been much more comprehensive in Latin America than in sub-Saharan Africa. Monitoring and evaluation protocols are crucial to facilitate improvements in government effectiveness. Anti-poverty transfer schemes seem to be subjected to more evaluation...
Working Paper
pdf
– Opportunities and Challenges
‘Ancillary experiments’ are a new technique whereby researchers use a completed experiment conducted by others to recover causal estimates of a randomized intervention on new outcomes. The method requires pairing new outcome data with randomized treatments the researchers themselves did not oversee...
Working Paper
pdf
– Towards Experiments?
In examining the study of government performance, this paper asks whether field experiments can improve the explanatory precision of results generated by public opinion surveys. Survey research on basic health and education services sub-Saharan Africa shows that the perceived ‘user friendliness’ (or...
Working Paper
pdf
– Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods in Development Economics
This paper provides a survey of six widely used non-experimental methods for estimating the impact of programmes in the context of developing economies (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, direct matching, propensity score matching, linear regression and non-parametric methods, and...
Working Paper
pdf
– Better Policies? Better Politics?
The paper provides a comparative analysis of the incidence of evaluation methods in antipoverty transfer programmes in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. The paper identifies two broad explanations for the incidence of evaluation in antipoverty transfer programmes in developing countries, one...
Blog
Rachel M. Gisselquist and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa Over the past decade, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have become a staple of research in development economics. Proponents of RCTs have advocated for their use as the best means of identifying ‘what works’ in development, while sceptics voice strong...
– Seeking Stability for Emerging Economies
This collection analyses the new trends in capital flows to emerging markets since the Asian crisis, their determinants and policy implications. It explains why such flows have declined so dramatically in recent years, emphasising both structural and cyclical factors. Senior bankers, regulators and...
Working Paper
pdf
The paper studies the trend towards the use of securities as a vehicle to transfer capital to developing economies, and how it is linked to the increasing use of derivatives transactions in developing countries. It also provides a descriptive analysis of how each type of capital vehicle is...
Working Paper
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This paper explores the complementary use of two instruments to manage capital-account volatility in developing countries: capital-account regulations and counter-cyclical prudential regulation of domestic financial intermediaries. Capital-account regulations can provide useful instruments in terms...
Working Paper
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– An Overview
In this overview we try to explain, first, why funds continued to flow towards emerging economies while fundamentals in host countries had been deteriorating before the Asian crisis (rising external deficit, with a significant liquid component appreciating exchange rates; low capital formation...
Working Paper
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This paper addresses the nature of the demand schedule for emerging market assets in both its macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions. The former is usually analysed in terms of the ‘push factors’ (such as interest rates or contagion) determining international capital flows; while the latter is...
Working Paper
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– Crossing the Border
This paper has two aims. The first is to provide some explanation for the extraordinary collapse in cross-border bank lending to developing countries which has taken place since 1997. The second is to argue that it might be too simplistic to characterize banks’ behaviour in the past few years as a...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Experience of Latin America since the Tequila Crisis
The paper deals with changes in the regulation and supervision of the Latin American financial sector in the aftermath of the ‘Tequila Crisis’ of 1994–95. While it finds that both have improved, regulation and supervision cannot resolve all problems; good macroeconomic policy and performance are...
Working Paper
pdf
– Water Flowing Uphill?
International bank lending is a major component of capital flows between advanced and emerging economies. However, in recent years these flows have been going the wrong way, like water flowing uphill. Even four years after the Asian crisis, there is a net flow of funds from emerging economies to...
Working Paper
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– A Review of the Literature, Empirical Evidence and some Policy Proposals
For many emerging market economies, over reliance on monetary policy may bring worse macro results, when compared to a more balanced framework of countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy. The use of countercyclical fiscal policy requires as a precondition solvent and sustainable fiscal accounts...
Working Paper
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– Issues, Implications and Policy Proposals
This paper argues that, if implemented in its current form, the new Basel Capital Accord will adversely effect developing sovereigns, corporates and banks wishing to borrow in international markets. This impact will result from the major banks’ lending patterns being altered by the adoption of...
Working Paper
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– And Why Modern Financial Regulation in Developed Countries is making Short-Term Capital Flows to Developing Countries Even More Volatile
Modern financial regulation has been about the spread of market-sensitive risk-management systems for banks, the spill-over of this approach to other financial institutions and the retreat of regulatory ambition. There is evidence that these trends are leading to a more fragile financial system...
Working Paper
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This article studies the currency risk management of multinational companies with investments in Latin American countries. The analysis is centred on episodes of currency or financial shocks, searching into the behaviour of the financial management of a firm expecting a significant devaluation. This...
Working Paper
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– Latin American Exchange Rate Policies During the Asian Crisis
During the Asian crisis, intermediate exchange rate regimes vanished. It has been argued that those regimes were no longer useful and only the extremes remained valid. The paper analyses three foreign exchange regimes: Argentina (pegged), Chile (band) and Mexico (float). The Argentinean currency...
Working Paper
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This paper examines what might be done to limit the boom-bust cycle in the flow of capital to emerging markets. Although the paper accepts that some types of capital flow (notably foreign direct investment) are much less problematic in this respect than others (notably short-term bank loans), it...
Displaying 32 of 33 results