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12. Is Anyone Listening? Does US Foreign Assistance Target People's Top Priorities?
- Author:
- Benjamin Leo
- Publication Date:
- 12-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The United States government has made repeated declarations over the last decade to align its assistance programs behind developing countries' priorities. By utilizing public attitude surveys for 42 African and Latin American countries, this paper examines how well the US has implemented this guiding principle. Building upon the Quality of Official Development Assistance Assessment (QuODA) approach, I identify what people cite most frequently as the 'most pressing problems' facing their nations and then measure the percentage of US assistance commitments that are directed towards addressing them. By focusing on public surveys over time, this analysis attempts to provide a more nuanced and targeted examination of whether US portfolios are addressing what people care the most about. As reference points, I compare US alignment trends with the two regional multilateral development banks (MDBs) – the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Overall, this analysis suggests that US assistance may be only modestly aligned with what people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America cite as their nation's most pressing problems. By comparison, the African Development Bank – which is majority-led by regional member nations – performs significantly better than the United States. Like the United States, however, the Inter-American Development Bank demonstrates a low relative level of support for people's top concerns.
- Topic:
- Security, Crime, Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, America, and Latin America
13. Hoping to Win, Expected to Lose: Theory and Lessons on Microenterprise Development
- Author:
- Dean Karlan, Ryan Knight, and Christopher Udry
- Publication Date:
- 11-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- We show how financial and managerial constraints impede experimentation and thus limit learning about the profitability of investments. Imperfect information about one's own type, but willingness to experiment to learn one's type, leads to short-run negative expected returns to investments, with some outliers succeeding. We find in an experiment that entrepreneurs invest randomized grants of cash and adopt advice from randomized grants of consulting services, but both lead to lower profits on average. In the long run, they revert back to their prior scale of operations. In a meta-analysis, results from 19 other experiments find mixed support for this theory.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Markets, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Africa
14. Europe Beyond Aid: Assessing Europe's Commitment to Development
- Author:
- David Roodman, Owen Barder, Julia Clark, Alice Lépissier, and Liza Reynolds
- Publication Date:
- 12-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- European countries pride themselves on being leaders in spurring development within poor countries. We find that Europe's approach to development could be characterised as energetically tackling the symptoms of poor economic opportunities for developing countries by providing effective aid, while doing relatively little to tackle the underlying structural causes of poverty. We use the Center for Global Development Commitment to Development Index (CDI) as a tool to examine Europe's performance overall. We combine the scores for the twenty-one European countries which are included in the 2012 edition of the Commitment to Development Index to calculate the single score they would have obtained if they had been a single country. This represents the combined commitment to development of these countries, by giving appropriate weight to the larger, more populous countries in Europe, which tend to have less development-friendly policies than the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Our calculations show that compared to the other countries in the CDI, Europe as a whole performs better than most CDI countries on aid and environment, but less well in other dimensions such as trade and security. This paper provides the background to a series of more detailed studies of the policies of European countries, individually and collectively through the European Union, in each dimension of the CDI, which the Center for Global Development in Europe is coordinating.
- Topic:
- Development, Political Economy, Poverty, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Europe
15. An Index of the Quality of Official Development Assistance in Health
- Author:
- Amanda Glassman and Denizhan Duran
- Publication Date:
- 02-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Health is one of the largest and most complex aid sectors: 16 percent of all aid went to the health sector in 2009. While many stress the importance of aid effectiveness, there are limited quantitative analyses of the quality of health aid. In this paper, we apply Birdsall and Kharas's Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) methodology to rank donors across 23 indicators of aid effectiveness in health. We present our results, track progress from 2008 to 2009, compare health to overall aid, discuss our limitations, and call for more transparent and relevant aid data in the sector level as well as the need to focus on impact and results.
- Topic:
- Development, Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
16. Incentives for Life: Cash-on-Delivery Aid for Tobacco Control in Developing Countries
- Author:
- Amanda Glassman and Thomas J. Bollyky
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Fewer people are smoking in the United States, Europe, and most of the developing world. Excise taxes, bans on smoking in public places, and graphic health warnings are achieving such dramatic reductions in tobacco use in developed countries that a recent Citigroup Bank investment analysis speculated that smoking could virtually disappear in wealthy countries over the next thirty to fifty years.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Gender Issues, International Trade and Finance, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
17. Supporting Private Business Growth in African Fragile States: A Guiding Framework for the World Bank Group in South Sudan and Other Nations
- Author:
- Vijaya Ramachandran, Benjamin Leo, and Ross Thuotte
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The World Bank Group faces significant operational changes over the near to medium term. More than half of poor countries are projected to graduate from the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) concessional assistance over the next 15 years. As a result, IDA's country client base is projected to become dominated by African fragile states. To its credit, the World Bank Group recognizes these coming changes and the unique needs and constraints present in fragile environments. It has publicly expressed a plan to develop an organization-wide strategy tailored specifically for fragile and conflict-affected situations.
- Topic:
- Development, Foreign Aid, Fragile/Failed State, and World Bank
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Sudan
18. The Quality of Official Development Assistance Assessment 2009: Is Aid Quality Improving?
- Author:
- Nancy Birdsall, Homi Kharas, and Rita Perakis
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- This report presents the results of the second edition of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) assessment, with a focus on the changes that have occurred in donor performance since the first edition. These results were released in summary form in November, 2011, just before the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- South Korea
19. Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?
- Author:
- Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Since the 2010 earthquake, almost $6 billion has been disbursed in official aid to Haiti, a country with a population of just under 10 million. An estimated $3 billion has been donated to NGOs in private contributions in addition to official aid. The United States Government alone has disbursed almost $2 billion of this total amount and has pledged over $3 billion for relief and reconstruction.
- Topic:
- Corruption, Humanitarian Aid, Non-Governmental Organization, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States, Caribbean, and Haiti
20. Adolescent Fertility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Effects and Solutions
- Author:
- Amanda Glassman, Kate McQueston, and Rachel Silverman
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Adolescent fertility in low- and middle-income countries presents a severe impediment to development and can lead to school dropout, lost productivity, and the intergenerational transmission of poverty. However, there is debate about whether adolescent pregnancy is a problem in and of itself or merely symptomatic of deeper, ingrained disadvantage. To inform policy choices and create a revised research agenda for population and development, this paper aggregates recent quantitative evidence on the socioeconomic consequences of and methods to reduce of teenage pregnancy in the developing world. The review finds variable results for all indicator types with the partial exception of knowledge-based indicators, which increased in response to almost all evaluating interventions, though it is not clear that such interventions necessarily lead to short- or long term-behavior change. The evidence base supporting the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers was relatively strong in comparison to other interventions. Similarly, programs that lowered barriers to attending school or increased the opportunity cost of school absence are also supported by the literature. On the basis of these findings, the authors argue that donors should adopt a rights-based approach to adolescent fertility and shift their focus from the proximate to distal causes of pregnancy, including human rights abuses, gender inequality, child marriage, and socioeconomic marginalization. Further research should be conducted to strengthen the evidence base by 1) establishing causality, 2) understanding the differential impacts of adolescent fertility in different contexts, and 3) investigating other the impact of adolescent fertility on other socioeconomic outcomes, such as labor participation, productivity, and the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Demographics, Development, Economics, Foreign Aid, and Youth Culture