China’s economy has expanded by leaps and bounds, with dazzling progress since it first opened to foreign investment and reform in 1978. Over the last 25 years and after a long period of economic autarky, the country has emerged as a major player in...

This paper studies interactions between aid and three other major North-South flows : international trade, FDI and migrations. It mainly focuses on the question of whether aid is allocated to countries that are benefiting from the other flows...

This report evaluates the evidence on how migration may promote or hinder development in countries of origin, and explores possible win-win solutions for both sending and receiving countries. The analysis of recent OECD data of foreign-born nationals...

It is recognised that migration can, under certain conditions, generate important net gains for the migrants’ home countries. These gains may be in terms of growth, poverty reduction, insurance against risk and accumulation of human capital. Moreover...

High quality institutions lower transaction costs, encourage trust, reinforce property rights and avoid the exclusion of sections of the population. Overcoming institutional bottlenecks that constrain entrepreneurial activities and the development of...

Efforts to establish, test and analyse hypotheses regarding cross-country variations in women’s economic status are hampered by the lack of a readily accessible and easily used information resource on the various dimensions of gender inequality....

The aim of this Working Paper is to broaden the debate on “pro-poor growth”. An exclusive focus on the income dimension of poverty has neglected the non-income dimensions. After an examination of prominent views on the linkages between economic...

The experience of the five examined industries (agro-food in Chile, cut flowers in Kenya, garment in Lesotho and in Mauritius and seafood in Thailand) demonstrates that non-traditional industries can emerge and achieved strong growth rates in very...

In this paper, trends in official development assistance (ODA) for Health AIDS and Population (HAP) are analysed to gain information about revealed priorities. The major findings are as follows: HIV/AIDS is clearly the top priority in international...

This paper analyses the impact of changes in social institutions, i.e. in the informal and formal social security system, on income inequality in China. This study uses an inequality decomposition analysis approach comparing household survey data for...

This study analyses the impact of democratic decentralisation on the chances of socially excluded groups to participate in newly created local governance institutions – Panchayati Raj Institutions – in three Indian states. This institutional reform...

Three novel macroeconomic policy challenges are discussed in this paper: the macroeconomic implications of China’s emergence; the implications of intensifying financial integration; and the interaction of Asia’s foreign exchange regime with monetary...

This paper studies the development of indigenous insurance institutions set up to help cover the high costs of funerals, using evidence from rural areas in Tanzania and Ethiopia. Many of these institutions tend to co-exist within the same community...

Raising manufacturing productivity is of central importance to the developing world and an essential element of policy making. Overcoming Barriers to Competitiveness is about establishing the most reliable analysis of manufacturing productivity...

Monitoring changes in public awareness and attitudes in rich countries towards aid and other international development policy issues is extremely difficult: due to lack of systematic polling or monitoring, there is no reliable, comparable data across...

Decentralisation has been advocated by donors and development agencies as an important factor broadening citizen participation and improving local governance, thereby promoting poverty reduction from the bottom up. On the basis of a comprehensive...

The institutional framework of a country plays a determining role in the well-being of the women who live in it. This paper examines the cases of four case countries: India, Kenya, Sudan and Tunisia. In each of these case studies, the status of women...

Natural disasters (droughts, earthquakes, epidemics, floods, wind storms) damage wellbeing, both in their immediate and long-term aftermath, and because the insecurity of exposure to disasters is in itself harmful to risk-averse people. As such,...

Donor agencies and policy makers tend to agree that increased access of women to education, health, credit, formal legal rights and employment opportunities, in conjunction with economic growth, will substantially improve the socio-economic role of...

Land dynamics are context specific and rapidly changing, and conflicts related to them do not systematically escalate into violence. One way of framing the discussion is to consider change in the structures of power governing the management of...