24 January 2014 In this interview Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann give an introduction to their research project at the Brooks World Poverty Institute...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are now widely used in development economics. However, their use is often resisted by non-governmental development organizations. The objections they raise differ between the three types of activities of such non...
India has employed a variety of military, political, and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural...
This paper explores the intergenerational effects of parental health shocks using longitudinal data from the Young Lives project conducted in Andhra Pradesh, India. It is found that health shocks to poorer parents reduce investments in children...
Multiactor global funds (MGFs) are emerging as important new mechanisms for the financing of development and other global priorities. MGFs like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are distinctive because they are administered and...
This paper explores the linkages between gender, local knowledge systems and agrobiodiversity for food security by using the case study of LinKS, a regional FAO project in Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Tanzania over a period of eight years and...
Based on analysing World Bank and other donor post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) loans and grants from rights-based, macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives, we conclude that few PCR projects identify or address gender discrimination issues...
This paper suggests how the targeting efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using the ‘pro-poor policy’ (PPP) index developed by authors, the study investigates the pro-poorness of not only government programmes geared to the...
Tony Addison As the snow continues to lie deep across Helsinki, UNU-WIDER is putting the last touches to the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the...
26 September 2014 Roger Williamson Huge interest in the WIDER Inequality Conference (5-6 September) Inequality is big news. Whether you think Thomas...
30 October 2014 Tony Addison With the first snow in Helsinki, we are settling in for the long winter. Our winters will become colder and snowier with...
31 October 2013 Tony Addison October finds Angle in New York, for our event on ‘Fragility and Aid–What Works?’ at the Permanent Mission of Germany to...
I am looking forward to WIDER Annual Lecture 18, held 18 November in New York not only because I expect that Peter Timmer will make a distinguished...
26 March 2014 Tony Addison The Nordic countries have a long-standing commitment to development, and their work in peace-building has taken Nordic...
Part of Journal Special Issue Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
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...
This paper compares the use of Challenge Funds by the UK’s Department for International Development and Sweden’s International Development Agency to address gender challenges in development. Challenges Funds are meant to bring the interests of...
Donor support for decentralization comes in two main categories: recommendations at the policy level and project activities at the programming level. At the policy level, donors promote decentralization by recommending greater autonomy for...
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...
There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations—which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates—and executive organizations—which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. Ministries of finance/planning...
24 September 2009 Finn Tarp, New Director at UN University-WIDER* ‘Some of us believe in analysing, some of us believe in humanising’ - Donovan...
The Yemen Social Fund for Development (SFD) was established in 1997 with the support of the international community, and in particular the World Bank, to combat national poverty and reinforce the limited existing social safety net. Since its...
Part of Journal Special Issue Development Financing
The failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas...
Part of Journal Special Issue Foreign Aid Heterogeneity
Part of Journal Special Issue Foreign Aid Heterogeneity
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Allocations and Development Financing
30 October 2013 Roger Williamson The UNU-WIDER meeting held last week in New York on the topic of fragility and aid argued forcefully that you cannot...
Mozambique benefits from environmental aid-related funds, but it is still unclear whether donor commitments render directly into projects that are copiously implemented for the purposes stated and what aid flows have actually been doing and are doing...
Corporate actors are now playing an important role in international development and contributing new ideas to development aid. Corporate–donor partnerships represent unique opportunities to combine the experience of donors with the innovative...
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...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
This article analyses the organizational structure as well as the characteristics of development finance provided by Arab donor countries. This is done with a comparative view in relation to western donors and with the aim to develop recommendations...
This paper argues that in view of the resource crunch confronting many developing countries and the fall in overseas development aid flows to them, new sources of development finance need to be found. We consider international taxes, fees and levies...
The ability of low-income countries to productively absorb large amounts of external assistance is a central issue for efforts to scale-up aid. This paper examines absorptive capacity in the context of MDG-based development programmes in low-income...
This article aims to contribute to the discussion about how to make development interventions more effective by analyzing the factors contributing to the success or failure of rural development projects. We made an aggregate level analysis of 46...
While we know a lot about how countries become prosperous, we have only begun to understand how aid contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction. The development record is mixed and no robust association between the volume of aid and...
Sector investment programmes have become a common tool in development assistance. However, their contribution to national growth of production and poverty reduction has been less investigated. The sector investments can be seen as a part of national...
An almost accidental by-product of the enhanced HIPC initiative, the process of producing poverty reduction strategy papers represents at least potentially a non-trivial change in the way international finance interacts with poverty reduction efforts...
Part of Journal Special Issue Female Entrepreneurship Across Countries and in Development
Official flows account for close to half of capital flows to developing countries, and close to 90 per cent of receipts for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper documents trends in these official flows over the last three decades. The most striking trend...
This paper identifies the rationale behind the emergence of private sector development (PSD) as a special area of development assistance. It describes PSD policies’ main elements and instruments and provides an overview of the differences and...
This paper assesses the preparation of Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (GPRS), paying particular attention to its likely influence on the institutionalisation of anti-poverty measures in the country’s political economy. After examining...
The rise of China as an economic and political ‘driver’ of the global economy is likely to be one of the defining moments of world history. Its dynamism and international expansion are on the verge of creating a ‘critical disruption’ in the global...
This paper examines empirical evidence on the volatility and uncertainty of aid flows, and the main policy implications. Aid is found to be more volatile than fiscal revenues—particularly in highly aid-dependent countries—and mildly procyclical in...
Combining data from both, a nationwide standards of living survey (LSMS) and a national population and housing census, this paper generates a disaggregated map of poverty and living conditions in Mozambique. This analytical tool helps to overcome a...
Part of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Part of Journal Special Issue Development Financing
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Advancing Development
The National Solidarity Programme (NSP) serves as a success story that has improved many Afghan lives and laid the groundwork for potential longer-term development. The NSP had a positive effect on access to drinking water and electricity, acceptance...
Part of Book Food Insecurity, Vulnerability and Human Rights Failure
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
Donor countries are currently scaling up their aid programmes in response to strategies proposed through the Millennium Development Goals. Recent positive research on the impact of foreign development aid has led to increased expectations on the part...
Part of Book Poverty and Undernutrition
Part of Journal Special Issue Experiments in Development Economics
by Giovanni Andrea Cornia, Anthony Shorrocks and Rolph van der HoevenThe last decade has witnessed a blossoming of research on poverty-related topics...
by Mark McGillivrayI. IntroductionGrowth in developing countries would be lower in the absence of aid. This is clear from the results of recent...
by Pertti Majanen and Riitta OksanenEffectiveness for poverty reduction and the MDGshe Finnish Government adopted a new development policy in 2004...
by Augustin Kwasi Fosu Many African countries grew fairly strongly until the early 1980s. If that growth had been maintained, these countries could...
This paper describes the results of an impact evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme, a community-driven development programme in Afghanistan that created democratic village councils and funded small-scale development projects. Using a...
In this paper we update previous work that categorizes foreign aid projects in terms of their likely impact on the natural environment. We then document trends in the global distribution of environmental aid over time and show that environmental aid...
After its 14-year civil war, Liberia worked with multiple donors and partners to restore security. This paper explores the Liberia National Police’s innovative efforts to create a more gender-sensitive police service and describes the international...
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