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Publications (64)
Working Paper
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We investigate the marginal productivity of investment across countries. The aim is to estimate the return on investments financed by foreign aid and by domestic resource mobilization, using aggregate data. Both returns are expected to vary across countries and time. Consequently we develop a...
Working Paper
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Understanding chronic poverty and its evolution is complex given the amount of information involved. This paper proposes a new approach to analysing the evolution of chronic poverty in a multivariate setting using a Shapley decomposition of a multidimensional chronic poverty measure proposed by...
Blog
11 September 2014 by Roger Williamson In this interview Finn Tarp, Director of UNU-WIDER, discusses the evidence uncovered in the aid and growth and other themes of the ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme, coordinated by UNU-WIDER 2011-13. Cross-country analysis Tarp presents...
Position Paper
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This position paper on Aid, Growth, and Employment was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-to-date overview and guide to a complex issue in the development field: the relation between aid and growth. Moreover, the position paper addresses the intricate linkages between aid and employment and tries—in a forward looking perspective—to identify existing challenges for future action in development practice and research with a view to increasing aid efficiency.The position paper relates to the...
Working Paper
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Does foreign aid promote aggregate economic growth? In contrast to widespread perceptions, academic studies of this question have been rapidly converging towards a positive answer. We employ a simulation approach to (i) validate the coherence of recent empirics and (ii) calculate plausible ranges...
Working Paper
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China’s importance as a major donor outside the traditional Western donors has been increasing and this has helped to bridge the funding gaps in developing countries. At the same time, South-South financial assistance still comes with less conditionality making China’s aid model different to Western...
Working Paper
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Growth and poverty reduction in Africa are weakly linked. This paper argues that the reason is that Africa has failed to create enough good jobs. Structural transformation―the relative growth of employment in high productivity sectors―has not featured in Africa’s post-1995 growth story. As a result...
Working Paper
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– Implications for Patron-Client Relationships in the Context of Bangladesh’s Agricultural Reformation
This paper investigates how a development intervention which targets extremely poor households with investment capital influences relationships between those households and the landowning elite. It places this investigation in the context of the ‘agricultural reformation’ of rural Bangladesh...
Working Paper
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Agriculture plays an important role in terms of employment and its contribution to gross domestic product in many African countries. Thus, any policy initiative targeted towards poverty reduction in Africa should consider the agricultural sector as the major priority area. Unfortunately, the sector...
Working Paper
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– a Simultaneous-Equation Model
This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in member countries of the Economic Community of West African States using panel data for 1990-2009 and a three equation simultaneous-equations model. The effect of foreign aid on economic growth among these ECOWAS countries was...
Working Paper
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– Uganda
This paper seeks to (i) establish the areas in which aid from the major donors is concentrated; (ii) examine how aid has been allocated to the environmental sectors, and (iii) review the factors behind the success of environmental projects. Using data from the Aiddata.org database, the distribution...
Working Paper
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The mixed record on the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and the focus on global public goods in post-MDG debates questions the future of traditional development co-operation (official development assistance, ODA). Meanwhile, international financial crisis and fiscal retrenchment have...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Moroccan and Tunisian Time-Series Data
We examine aid-induced Dutch Disease—after controlling for the effects of remittances and FDI flows—in the context of two North African countries, Morocco and Tunisia. We do so by performing a multivariate time series analysis of aggregated annual data over the period 1980-2009. Aid causes real...
Working Paper
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– Selective Perspectives Over Three Decades 1975-2005
The World Bank is uniquely positioned to identify and disseminate innovative development practices. Based on his thirty-year experience as a World Bank staff member, the author takes an institutional perspective on the innovation climate at the World Bank focusing on dominant development paradigms...
Working Paper
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The purpose of this paper is to capture the impact of foreign capital inflows (which include foreign aid and foreign direct investment) on economic growth in Cameroon. Using the autoregressive distributive lag approach to cointegration and time-series data for the period 1980–2008, the results of...
Working Paper
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The foreign aid landscape has undergone a paradigm shift in the last few decades, with changes in the behaviour of ‘traditional’ donors and a new focus on selectivity in aid disbursement, as well as ‘new’ donors and South-South co-operation playing an increasingly important role. Amidst these...
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