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Publications (29)
Research Brief
In 2008 Doucouliagos and Paldam published a paper, hereafter known as DP08, based on a meta-analytic approach to the aid-growth question. Working with a database including 68 studies on the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth they arrived at a pessimistic result. This is in line...
Research Brief
In 1959 the Netherlands discovered vast natural gas resources in the North Sea. This discovery led to a rapid increase in the country’s national wealth. However in the 1960s the Netherlands experienced an economic crisis. The natural gas reserves were one of the causes of this crisis, as the Dutch...
Research Brief
– The Case of Sierra Leone
Phillip Michael Kargbo's UNU-WIDER working paper, 'Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth in Sierra Leone: Empirical Analysis' examines the impact of foreign aid on growth in Sierra Leone using a variety of econometric approaches. The paper finds that in the period 1970-2007 aid has a significant...
Research Brief
It is widely recognized that entrepreneurship is of critical importance to industrial development. Despite this importance we know little about the skills of business owners and managers in developing countries. In the WIDER Working Paper ‘The Role of Training in Fostering Cluster-Based Micro and...
Research Brief
– A New Agenda
It is commonly acknowledged that developing economies are characterized by large differences in output per worker across sectors. For such economies the shift of resources from low productivity to high productivity is the key potential driver of economic growth. Nearly all developing countries that...
Research Brief
The question of whether aid is effective in promoting growth is a controversial one. Views range from those who are highly skeptical that aid has any effect on growth at all, to those who believe that aid can play a significant role in promoting economic development. In the WIDER Working Paper 'The...
Research Brief
In the WIDER Working Paper ‘Aid and Investment in Statistics for Africa’ Jeffery I. Round discusses how the effectiveness of aid aimed at improving statistical capacity in Africa can be assessed. He begins by describing the reasons behind the increasing demand for data, and the institutions involved...
Research Brief
A key pledge of the Paris Deceleration of 2005 was that aid flows would be made more predictable. This is a key goal as aid shortfalls can cause a government to disproportionately cut their investments, while sudden spikes in aid can lead to a dramatic boost in government consumption. The majority...
Research Brief
It is predicted that the global financial crisis will negatively affect developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa both through a reduction in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) caused by the shrinking (or stagnating) of the economies of many major donors, and by a reduction in overseas trade due...
Research Brief
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There are over 900 million working people who earn less than US$2 a day, while 200 million people are unemployed. Unemployment is a bigger problem in high-income countries, in low-income countries unemployment is rarer as work is essential for survival for the poor. One of the most pressing goals of...
Research Brief
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The programme did lead participating households to use improved seeds. Food consumption scores did not improve after the programme. However during the programme participating households moved to more sustainable strategies to cope with food shortages. Fertilizer use improved by 20 per cent amongst...
Research Brief
A common theme in the literature on aid effectiveness is that the character of the relationship between donors and recipients is a crucial determinant of how effective the provided aid is. One important dimension of this relationship is the extent to which donors in a certain country coordinate...
Research Brief
As the country’s oil production shifts into gear, Ghana’s new status as a middle-income country is bound to see a reduction in official development assistance (ODA) in the medium to long term. This emerging oil industry will most likely provide a stimulus for increased net foreign direct investment...
Research Brief
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Three-quarters of the world’s poor (however defined) live in countries classified as middle-income. Donors need not assume their only option is to abandon countries once they cross the arbitrary threshold in per capita income. The thresholds themselves currently used to classify countries as low...
Research Brief
The strong interdependent relationship between the developed and developing countries made itself visible again with the recent economic downturn. Due to the now truly global character of the economy, the crisis did not only affect the North, where the first signs of crisis were seen in 2007, but...
Research Brief
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Strong economic growth has not turned into poverty reduction in Mozambique due to stagnation in job creation. While the country sees great growth potential from natural resources, this industry is unlikely to generate many jobs as it is not labour-intensive. A fundamental challenge to job growth in...
Displaying 16 of 29 results