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Publications (53)
Working Paper
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– Challenges and Opportunities
This paper primarily focuses on how global funding has supported interventions that have proven to be successful in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality around the world. The growth rate of development assistance targeted towards these specific interventions has varied greatly over the...
Research Brief
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Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive impacts are seen in Africa. Women tend to benefit...
Working Paper
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– Drivers, Lessons and Shifts in the Engagement of the Brazilian Ministry of Social Development
The Brazilian Ministry of Social Development’s co-operation with sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from an initial engagement in cash transfers to a recent engagement in food and nutritional security. This paper aims at understanding the main drivers for such shift considering lessons drawn from first...
Working Paper
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– Why Does Aid Not Address Poverty (Much)?
Aid is not generally aimed at the poorest people, though most multilateral or bilateral agencies would like to think they get included. However, donors’ strategies are generally blind to differentiation among the poor, and have not improved in this respect. The special provisions for the least...
Position Paper
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This position paper on Aid and the Social Sectors 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-todate overview and analysis of an extraordinarily important issue in the development field: The contribution of foreign aid to human development.Social sector policy and the services that they provide are recognised for their intrinsic values and instrumental qualities for the functioning of individuals in particular, and the development strategies of countries more general. There is overwhelming...
Working Paper
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This paper explores the current evidence underlying the debate on aid effectiveness, with a specific focus on the health sector. It summarizes the history of aid and outlines the methodological challenges encountered when assessing its effectiveness. The current evidence on ‘what works’ in the...
Working Paper
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This paper develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resort to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 51 African countries covering the period 1980 to 2012...
The UNU-WIDER Special Issue aims to address collectively the following questions: (1) What are the principles and facts that have underpinned the evolution of bilateral and multilateral social sector aid over the past 25 years? In particular, how pro-poor has aid to the social sectors been? (2) What...
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
Aid, Social Policy and Development
Research Brief
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The most successful projects and programmes are those that give local partners real ownership over the development process. Aid to health is not always allocated to the areas where it is most needed. Aid fragmentation creates extra costs for recipient countries and reduces the effectiveness of...
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.
– The Case of the Ministry of Social Development in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid, Social Policy and Development
Working Paper
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– What Matters for Learning in East Africa?
Raising schooling quality in low-income countries is a pressing challenge. Substantial research has considered the impact of cutting class sizes on skills acquisition. Considerably less attention has been given to the extent to which peer effects, which refer to class composition, also may affect...
Working Paper
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In many African countries, decentralization has long been viewed as a means for improving local service delivery. Yet, despite various decentralization initiatives, poor service delivery continues to be problematic in two of Kenya’s largest cities, Nairobi and Mombasa. Despite various governance...
Research Brief
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Aid has had positive effect on growth and poverty reduction on average in the long term. There is no evidence of aid systematically increasing infl ation or reducing the amount of credit available to private industry. In general aid that is channeled to human capital appears to be effective at...
Working Paper
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– Implementation of the New Aid Effectiveness Agenda in Health and Education in Zambia
There is a growing interest in the debate on aid effectiveness for assessing the impact of aid not only on economic growth and poverty reduction, but also on intermediate outcomes such as health and education. This paper reviews evidence from recent in-depth country work on the impact of government...
Displaying 16 of 53 results