This paper models the inter-temporal allocation of foreign development aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG). A formal theoretical model of aid allocation is developed, in which aid to any one country is determined jointly with aid to all other recipient...
Japan has provided foreign aid for some 60 years. Japan’s aid has grown and evolved as it became richer and as the developing world changed too. Japan is a strong supporter of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and revised its ODA Charter in...
The paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans. A number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries...
Finn Tarp The current global development agenda is centred on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established at the turn of the Millennium. They...
21 March 2013 In foreign aid, results are the buzz word of the day; evaluation, monitoring, and quality control are the means of demonstrating to...
9 May 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén The world is a complex place where risk and uncertainty are an everyday challenge. Decision makers at all levels say...
Tony Addison Today, there is much frustration with the financial sector. Society’s precious savings are not being put to the best of uses—investing...
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...
Policy coherence implies that donors in pursuing domestic policy objectives should avoid adversely affecting the development prospects of poor countries. To achieve policy coherence donors and multilateral institutions need to ensure security and...
David L. Richards Over the past decades, the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘human development’ have been characterized as being: complementary to one...
Danielle Resnick During the last month, three democracies in Africa witnessed incumbent presidents exit office in very different ways. The most...
Tony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor...
Carl-Gustav Lindén One important part of ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid is the sharing of results. October saw the largest effort so...
This paper surveys 50 years of empirical research on the macroeconomic impact of aid, looking mainly at studies examining the link between aid and growth. It argues that studies dating until the late 1990s produced either contradictory or...
‘In a very real sense, the conditions that spawned the war and inflicted gruesome casualties on Sierra Leone’s citizens have not disappeared’, warned the International Crisis Group. In this paper we argue that many of those conditions are being...
This article examines the external and internal dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone. The United Nations, bilateral donors such as the United Kingdom, and transnational non-governmental organizations and aid agencies have been...
Peace can generate an economic dividend, which can be further increased by appropriate economic reform. This dividend can in turn be used to raise popular support for conflict resolution measures along the road to achieving a final political...
Debt relief and the scaling up of aid to low-income countries should allow for greater fiscal space for expenditure programmes to create long-term growth and lower poverty rates. But designing a suitable medium-term fiscal framework that fosters a...
The study seeks to identify donor-specific factors that cause donors to delay aid disbursement, and to apply a double standard in dealing with the non-compliance of a recipient with regard to aid conditionalities, a practice that promotes uncertainty...
Several countries in Africa – including Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda - have recently discovered large oil and gas or other mineral...
The present paper is a first attempt to develop a theoretical model using a short-term vis-à-vis long-term contract framework within which donor countries’ endorsement or rejection decision towards the recently proposed International Finance Facility...
There is a widespread view that political criteria have received less emphasis in aid allocation since the end of the cold war, with a greater share of aid subsequently being based on developmental criteria. An observed increase in aid effectiveness...
This paper investigates how people created, adapted and used social capital and conflict resolution during more than a decade of violent conflict in Liberia, and the potential of such capital to contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding and self...
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have lofty expectations regarding the impact of official development aid. Are these expectations valid? This paper surveys the literature on aid and growth. It finds that practically all aid studies since the...
Public policies often involve choices of alternatives in which the size and the composition of the population may vary. Examples are the allocation of resources to prenatal care and the design of aid packages to developing countries. In order to...
The paper builds on recent empirical evidence on the importance of strategic donor behaviour in aid allocation in order to develop a theoretical model where donor pressure on a recipient for influencing the aid disbursement of a multilateral...
Countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone are now attempting to recover from major wars, often amidst continuing insecurity. The challenge is to achieve a broad-based recovery that benefits the majority of people. The economic and...
Issues related to the volatility of aid flows are now becoming crucial in view of their relevance to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The paper examines aid volatility using data for 66 aid recipients over the period 1973-2002. We...
This paper summarises research on aid allocation and effectiveness, highlighting the current findings of recent research on aid allocation to fragile states. Fragile states are defined by the donor community as those with either critically poor...
The paper uses an aid disaggregation approach to examine the impact of different types of aid on the fiscal sector of the aid-recipient country. It uses time-series data on different types of aid (project aid, programme aid, technical assistance and...
The paper contributes to the empirics of aid and growth by taking a fresh look at the aid-policies-growth nexus emanating from the very influential but also debatable paper on the subject by Burnside and Dollar: ‘Aid, Policies and Growth’. We employ...
Much public discussion about foreign aid has focused on whether and how to increase its quantity. But recently aid quality has come to the fore, by which is meant the efficiency of the aid delivery process. This paper focuses on one process problem...
Ghana’s tax reforms constitute the major policy instrument needed to accelerate growth and poverty reduction. Over the past two decades, the government has consistently spent more revenue than it is able to generate and the gap is often financed with...
This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on public sector fiscal behaviour in Côte d’Ivoire. A special interest is the relationship between aid, debt servicing and debt, given that Côte d’Ivoire is a highly indebted country. The theoretical...
Studies of the inter-recipient allocation of aid may be categorized threefold. First, there are those which attempt to explain the observed allocation of aid. Second, there are those which seek to describe or evaluate the allocation of aid against...
The paper considers the political obstacles and supports for additional development finance and a number of possible devices through which advantage may be taken of the supports and the obstacles circumvented. It emphasizes the need for effective...
This paper surveys recent research on aid and growth. It also provides an overview of research on inter-recipient aid allocation. The overall focus of the paper is on the relevance of these issues for poverty-efficient aid, defined as a pattern of...
Understanding the development effects of official aid is crucial to building a better bridge between research and policy. This paper reviews the current evidence regarding the impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction, and develops a new...
This paper considers lessons from the practice of fiscal federalism for guidance on new approaches to development finance. Despite the fact that inter-regional redistribution in a federation relies on a central government with strong fiscal powers...
In analysing proposals for new sources of development funding, there are several issues that arise across the board. What is the role of new sources in relation to existing overseas development assistance? Should we be seeking new sources that...
Remittances, after foreign direct investment, are currently the most important source of external finance to developing countries. Remittances surpass foreign aid, and tend to be more stable than such volatile capital flows as portfolio investment...
The UNU-WIDER research programme on foreign aid (ReCom) began in 2010, in a period of strong aid scepticism. Dambisa Moyo’s well-known book, Dead Aid...
Efforts to realize the issue of development-focused Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been on-going for many years. Recently, however, the campaign first gained a new momentum immediately after the Asian...
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...
The real value of official aid flows fell for much of the 1990s, and private capital flows to low-income countries remain mostly limited. The decline in aid flows may endanger the development process, since they finance much of the development budget...
The real value of official aid flows fell for much of the 1990s, and private capital flows to low-income countries remain mostly limited. The decline in aid flows may endanger the development process, since they finance much of the development budget...
In academic discourse, it has become almost ritualistic to begin a piece on foreign aid by highlighting the sharp controversies over its effectiveness...
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) give aid to Africa a new emphasis. Yet aid flows to Africa have trended downward over the last decade, and as a consequence more Africans now live in poverty. This is especially true of Sub-Saharan Africa. Any...
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
The present paper serves as an introduction to this special issue providing a justification for, and linking and introducing to the articles that follow. A central message emanating from the papers included in this special issue is that it is not...
This Policy Arena examines some of the development challenges faced by SIDS. It brings together a collection of papers arising from the UNU-WIDER project Fragility and Development. These investigations were presented at the UNU-WIDER project meeting...
This Focus is devoted to small islands' development challenges, specifically relating to the achievement of economic growth, and draws on five papers arising from the UNU-WIDER 'Fragility and Development' research project meeting held in Fiji in...
In recent years there is a growing concern within the international donor community regarding the plight of a special group of countries labeled as 'Fragile States'. These states, which according to current donor lists currently numbers more than 40...
With entries from leading international scholars from around the world, this eight-volume encyclopedia offers the widest possible coverage of key areas both regionally and globally. The International Encyclopedia of Political Science provides a...
Peter Burnell The UN Doha Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, held late in 2008, reminds us of how far foreign aid has...
As a result of the Five Year Review of the World Summit for Social Development, the UN General Assembly in September 2000 adopted a resolution calling for 'a rigorous analysis of the advantages, disadvantages and other implications of proposals for...
China is emerging as perhaps the most globally significant development finance provider, going far beyond concessional foreign aid. With China’s initiatives to create and foster new multi-lateral finance institutions, and to work in terms of large...
Wim Naudé, Mark McGillivray and Amelia U. Santos-Paulino A vital part of WIDER's research agenda has in recent years focused on the challenges faced...
Following on WIDER's work on Development Finance which has involved three projects since 2002, a development conference on 'Aid: Principles, Policies and Performance' was organized in June 2006. Aid is one of the most challenging development issues...
The ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid – programme produced 247 original studies. More than 300 researchers from 59 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred...
This paper discusses the recent history of education aid policy. It highlights an important shift in policy thinking in the international aid architecture that has dominated the global education aid agenda since the early 1990s. It argues that...
Finn Tarp This is the first in a series of articles that Angle will be running before and after the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan...
Jane Harrigan Donor political interests have heavily influenced aid flows to North Africa in the past. This has reduced the effectiveness of aid which...
External development finance consists of those foreign sources of funds that promote or at least have the potential to promote development in the destination countries if delivered in the appropriate form. This rather broad definition qualifies all...
Growth, poverty reduction, and social peace are all undermined when public expenditure management and taxation are weak and when the fiscal deficit and public debt are not managed successfully. And large-scale aid and debt relief cannot work without...
This paper examines China and Africa co-operation from the angle of structural transformation as a major driver of growth and job creation. Being a bit ahead in the structural transformation process, China can provide ideas, tacit knowledge...
This paper provides a synthesis of successful strategies and implied lessons for development success, employing at least six themes on in-depth case studies of a large number of developing countries around the world. The coverage includes East Asia...
Aid is said to be fungible at the aggregate level if it raises government expenditures by less than the total amount. This happens when the recipient government decreases domestic revenue, decreases net borrowing, or when aid bypasses the budget...
Recent writing on industrial policy stresses the need for coordination between the public and private sectors. This paper examines the performance of one such coordination mechanism, Presidential Investors’ Advisory Councils, in Ethiopia, Senegal...
The paper assesses the multilateral development financing system in the light of the replenishments of three key funds in 2013. It argues that the replenishments showed strong continuing support for each institution, but identifies challenges...
Rwanda's genocide is the end-result of a combination of processes, none of which can easily be priorized or separated from the others. These processes are: extreme pauperization and reduction of life chances for a majority of the poor, especially...
In June 1998, Guinea-Bissau was thrown into conflict by a military revolt. This led to 11 months of fighting, extensive loss of life, and the displacement of up to a third of the country's population. This paper discusses the political economy of the...
We argue in this paper that cancelling the debt of the poorest countries was a good thing, but that it should not imply that the debt instrument should be foregone. Debt and debt cancellations are indeed two complementary instruments which, if...
In this paper we examine whether absorptive capacity can constitute sufficient justification for rejecting the proposal of a large aid increase to support the ‘big push’. We argue that the probability of a poverty trap exists for many countries, in...
We analyse the aid portfolio of various bilateral and multilateral donors, testing whether they have prioritized aid in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Employing Tobit models that combine sectorally disaggregated aid data with...
The record of aid to fragile and poorly-performing states is the real test of aid effectiveness. Rich countries can justify aid to fragile states both through altruism and self-interest. But, with some exceptions, donors have appeared at the wrong...
Some of the ways that have recently been discussed for increasing significantly the own resources of developing countries, or the amount or usefulness of the overseas aid that they receive, are potentially promising politically. This is because the...
This study is premised on the view that reports circulating in the 1990s, claiming foreign aid was in terminal crisis, were premature. Aid’s reviving fortunes are explained in terms both of a growing awareness of the uneven implications of...
Three changes in conditionality of loans are proposed in this study, in order to improve the relations between developing country borrowers and international lending agencies, and make the international cooperative effort at development and stability...
This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth...
Part of Journal Special Issue Sustainability of External Development Finance
International Women’s Day on 8th March 2016 is a time to celebrate. It is also a time for reflection. We must constantly remind ourselves that while...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
The six studies, selected from those contributed to the research project entitled The Integration of the New Market Economies of Europe and Asia into the World Economy: the Changing Internal and External Factors and Global Implications, open with...
The classical transfer problem is studied in an overlapping generations framework, where the transfer is from a creditor country to a debtor country. A distinction is made between tax-financed and debt-financed transfers on the one hand, and between...
Part of Journal Special Issue Sustainability of External Development Finance
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Tony Addison With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Malokele Nanivazo and Lucy Scott The first gender equality workshop under UNU-WIDER’S ReCom—Research and Communication in Foreign Aid project was held...
This is the second of a two-part article presenting key discussion points from the UNU-WIDER gender equality workshop held 12-13 July 2012, in...
Yongfu Huang The climate change crisis and development needs of the world's poor require us to acknowledge the necessity and urgency for both...
Lucy Scott and Annett Victorero The ReCom—Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme held its first results meeting on the topic of ‘Aid...
Tony Addison, Lucy Scott, and Annett Victorero Aid effectiveness was a recurrent theme during the UNU-WIDER conference on ‘Foreign Aid: Research and...
Tony Addison and Lucy Scott This article draws upon on-going conversations and debates about the aid effectiveness agenda. It discusses how the agenda...
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
Tony Addison With the end of the year fast approaching, we bring you the last Angle of 2011. Here in Helsinki, the shortest day of the year is nearly...
An important feature of aid to developing countries is that it is given to the government. As a result, aid should be expected to affect fiscal behaviour, although theory and existing evidence is ambiguous regarding the nature of these effects. This...
There has been significant amount of aid inflows to developing countries including Ghana, but these have been very volatile. Aid flows have been associated with low domestic resource mobilization and have reduced Ghana to a country heavily dependent...
This paper is a contribution to the literature on aid and growth. Despite an extensive empirical literature in this area, existing studies have not addressed directly the mechanisms via which aid should affect growth. We identify investment as the...
Many of the world’s poorest countries can be described as 'fragile states' wherein governments cannot or will not provide an environment for households to reduce, mitigate, or cope with poverty and other risks to wellbeing. Many of these states are...
Tony Addison and Finn Tarp More than 200 researchers and policymakers came together in Helsinki in mid-May to celebrate UNU-WIDER's 25th anniversary...
Poor governance and lack of state capabilities in around 45 countries pose a threat to global security and development. The involvement of the international community is required to help these states break out of their low-development–high-conflict...
1. La communauté internationale doit mettre au point des methodes permettant de soutenir la croissance japonaise afin d'attenuer les effets de l'essoufflement americain et d'enrayer toute amorce de deflation mondiale.2. Alors que certaines des...
Book chapter in P. Andersen, I. Henriksen, J.H. Petersen and H. Zobbe (eds.) How Does the World Look? (in Danish).One of Professor Niels Kærgård's teachers at the University of Copenhagen, Prof. Mogens Boserup, asked in 1967: "Do we help?" (Boserup...
This study aims to provide a neo-institutional explanation of why South Korea increasingly intends to share its developmental experience with the rest of the world. South Korea’s knowledge sharing projects are the leading example of expansionary and...
The Study Group arrived at the following conclusions and recommendations: 1. Substantial surpluses on current account are likely to prevail for the next several years among many developed countries, and there is a need for their diversification...
Le génocide rwandais est le résultat final d'une combinaison de mécanismes dont aucun ne peut revendiquer être prioritaire ou indépendant des autres. Parmi ces mécanismes figurent une extrême pauvreté et la réduction des perspectives d'avenir pour la...
The studies of this Special Issue aim to address the general question of how aid can better support the collective actions that seek to improve education systems in developing countries. Overall, they provide an analysis of key policy strategies that...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Education Policy, and Development
This paper describes the scale and nature of development assistance to projects that sought to improve housing and living conditions for low income groups, including housing-related infrastructure and services such as water supply, sanitation and...
With the end of the cold war, the military prerogatives that motivate aid have clearly diminished in importance. However, other political and strategic considerations remain prominent in deciding the direction and content of development assistance...
The impact of aid inflows on relative prices and output is ambiguous. Aid inflows that increase domestic expenditure are likely to cause real exchange rate appreciation, ceteris paribus. However, if this expenditure raises the capital stock in the...
For the Central Asian countries the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to economic disintegration as old coordination mechanisms disappeared and new national borders appeared. This paper analyses why it has been difficult to coordinate aid for...
The budgets of development NGOs have risen dramatically over the last decades. In stark contrast to bilateral donors, the geographic choices of NGOs remain virtually unexplored. Using a new dataset and Lorenz curves, this paper shows that NGOs are...
This paper examines how macroeconomic policies can be managed to accommodate a large inflow of foreign aid to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic and still maintain macroeconomic stability. Because of the daunting scale of this epidemic, funds need to be...
At the very time that professional skepticism concerning the effectiveness of foreign aid has reached new heights, donors seem to be ready to substantially increase the volume of aid they are willing to make available. This paper attempts to address...
Macro vulnerability of the small island developing states (SIDS) as well as of least developed countries (LDCs) has been an increasing concern for the international community. This concern has led to the creation of the economic vulnerability index...
The paper discusses implications for practice and theory of the recently completed Joint Evaluation of General Budget Support 2004-06 based on case studies in Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Uganda and Vietnam. The paper first...
This study econometrically evaluates the short-run impact of aid in small developing countries (SDCs) by applying a VAR model to study aid's impact on 'absorption' (increasing import demand) and 'spending' (increased domestic demand) across countries...
This paper shows that foreign aid in postwar Lebanon passed through two phases with distinct features that have had far reaching implications for postwar development. In the first phase lasting from 1992-97, foreign aid was mainly channeled towards...
The paper explores the impact of a binding external debt-servicing constraint on the sectoral composition of government expenditures in the economies of Africa, where this constraint has traditionally been most prevalent. Applying seemingly unrelated...
This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource...
The current consensus objective of development aid in the international community is to reduce poverty in general and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in particular. In addition, the dominant view identifies economic growth as the...
This paper re-asserts the importance of certain old-fashioned questions relating to international aid: what is the quantum of aid available in relation to the need for it? How may patterns of allocation, at both the dispensing and receiving ends of...
Over the past few years addressing state fragility in the third world has become an important priority in international development cooperation. However, it seems that the international donor community has so far not been able to develop adequate...
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