Aid Effectiveness – A New Scorecard

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Ken

The Centre for Global Development has published a new collection of measures related to aid effectiveness, along with a web-based tool for looking at different dimensions of aid. Remarkably, Canada is almost exactly average, not just in total, but also along each of the survey’s four primary dimensions of analysis.

Canada’s results, and the web tool are here.

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The Democratic Transition

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Ken

A new empirical paper on the relationship between democracy and economic growth, by Romain Wacziarg and Fabrice Murtin.

Abstract
Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with rising levels of democracy. We find that primary schooling, and to a weaker extent per capita income levels, are strong determinants of the quality of political institutions. We find little evidence of causality running the other way, from democracy to income or education.

Link to paper – PDF version.

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African poverty: Falling faster than you think

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Ken

A summary of recent work on African poverty rates by Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin.

African poverty: Falling faster than you think.

The critical result to this research is the decline in inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-late 1980′s, and the sustained increase in average income since the mid-1990′s. While the second effect seems real, the first seems somewhat suspect.

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Measuring Development

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Ken

A new paper by Martin Ravallion from the World Bank. The basic idea – the UN HDI formulation has changed but remains arbitrary.

SSRN link

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Dead Aid – The Short Version

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Ken

Her 2009 Wall Street Journal article, based on her book “Dead Aid”, on the negative role of foreign aid.

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Will Ireland stay in the Euro?

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Ken

Not my area of expertise, but an interesting dichotomy that might be of interest to my Global Governance students. Will Ireland stay with the euro? And how much can they extract from the rest of Europe to get them to stay?

EU via Reuters: No risk of euro zone breakup in Irish crisis

Globe and Mail: Ireland will rise again – with or without the euro

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Economic White Papers – The Grand Challenges

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Ken

A variety of leading economists present their opinions on the key issues for research in the social sciences. Link

The importance of institutions, both formal and informal, and their interaction, are highlighted in the essays by Acemoglu, Alesina, and Samuelson, among others.

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The Right Price of Food

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Ken

An interesting paper on how the fluctuations in the commodities markets are reported in the development literature.

Abstract – by Johan F.M. Swinnen

Only a few years ago the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries and the poor. The dramatic increase of food prices in 2006-2008 appears to have fundamentally altered this view. The vast majority of analyses and reports in 2008 and 2009 state that high food prices have a devastating effect on developing countries and the world’s poor. This reversal of opinion raises questions about the old and the new arguments and about the proposed remedies. It also raises questions about the causes of this dramatic turnaround in analysis and policy conclusions. In this paper I document these changes in perspective and I discuss potential implications and offer hypotheses on the cause of the change in views.

Borrowed from Dani Rodrik’s blog

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