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81. Austerity and the IMF

Author:
Kenneth Rogoff
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
It is a great honor to present the fifth annual Richard H. Sabot lecture at the Center for Global Development. In this talk, I will take up a relatively narrow but absolutely fundamental question in the international monetary system, particularly in developing countries: Is the International Monetary fund (the IMF) guilty of bringing excessive austerity to the countries that turn to it for bailout funding? Should the IMF instead put much more weight on encouraging countercyclical fiscal policy, as it does in rich countries? Extremely difficult and complex issues underlie these seemingly straightforward questions. My modest aim in this lecture is to help clarify the issues so as to promote rational dialogue.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, International Monetary Fund, and Foreign Aid

82. Aid for Trade: Supporting Trade Preference Reform

Author:
Susan Prowse
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Aid-for-trade programs can help strengthen low-income countries' supply capacity and knowledge of trade preferences, which will allow them to take fuller advantage of these preferences. Aid for trade to support preference reform can be divided into three categories: (i) creation of information-sharing mechanisms to ensure that governments, SMEs and other businesses are aware of the opportunities that preferential market access offers; (ii) capacity-building support to overcome supply-side and policy constraints; and (iii) support to ease the adjustments to preference erosion that will inevitably occur. As with other aid initiatives, coordination and cohesion among assistance programs is critical for success. Delivery mechanisms such as the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), the Trade Facilitation Facility (TFF), and the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF), are aimed at facilitating such coordination, but more could be done. And, as preference programs are intended to be temporary, aid for trade can also facilitate graduation from these programs and compensate beneficiaries for preference erosion. Unfortunately, this area is still lacking the level of innovation and financial support needed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid

83. How Can Donors Create Incentives for Results and Flexibility for Fragile States? A Proposal for IDA

Author:
Alan Gelb
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
International Development Association (IDA) donors and others operating a country performance-based allocation system face two difficult problems: how to strengthen incentives to produce and document development results and how to increase flexibility for fragile states. Fragile states have the greatest need for projects, but their projects tend to rate poorly in performance-based allocations systems, which provide little incentive to produce successful projects in fragile states or other countries.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid

84. The Legacy of the Jubilee Debt Relief Movement: Agreements, Lessons, and Remaining Challenges

Author:
Benjamin Leo
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Over the last 25 years, the international community has pursued a series of measures to address unsustainable debt burdens in low-income countries. Early actions focused on debt relief for official bilateral claims—initially by rescheduling—followed by increasing levels of debt stock reduction. During this period, the Paris Club repeatedly reduced or rescheduled the debts of a number of countries.
Topic:
Debt, Development, and Foreign Aid

85. Not Just Aid: How Making Government Work Can Transform Africa

Author:
Tony Blair
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Country ownership has become the new watchword in development. The problem for traditional donors is that ownership is too often code for convincing developing country governments to adopt the donors' agenda as their own: a way of securing influence without imposing conditionality. What is really needed is genuine country leadership. As President Obama said when he announced the United States' new development policy at the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in New York in September, “We will partner with countries that are willing to take the lead. Because the days when your development was dictated in foreign capitals must come to an end.”
Topic:
Development, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, New York, and United Nations

86. Giving Money Away? The Politics of Direct Distribution in Resource Rich States

Author:
Alexandra Gillies
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The governments of resource rich states have several options for how to allocate oil and mineral revenues, including the direct distribution of revenues to their citizens. This paper discusses the political feasibility and political implications of such cash transfers in the specific context of resource-rich states. Identifying the contexts in which this policy is mostly likely to emerge, and understanding the potential governance risks and benefits, will help policymakers to consider the desirability of cash transfers as an allocation choice.
Topic:
Development, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment

87. Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid

Author:
Nancy Birdsall, Ayah Mahgoub, and William D. Savedoff
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Foreign aid often works, but it is often criticized for being ineffective or even for undermining progress in developing countries. This brief describes a new approach, Cash on Delivery Aid, which gives recipients full responsibility and authority over funds paid in proportion to verified measures of progress. Through the example of using COD Aid to support universal primary-school completion, the brief illustrates a practical approach to aid that holds the promise of making aid more effective and less burdensome by fundamentally restructuring the relationships of accountability among funders, recipients, and their respective constituencies.
Topic:
Development, Education, Third World, and Foreign Aid

88. Think Long Term: How Global AIDS Donors Can Strengthen the Health Workforce in Africa

Author:
Nandini Oomman and Christina Droggitis
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
For the past decade, global AIDS donors—including the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEFPAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa (the MAP)—have responded to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as an emergency. Financial and programmatic efforts have been quick, vertical, and HIV-specific. To achieve ambitious HIV/AIDS targets, AIDS donors mobilized health workers from weak and understaffed national health workforces. The shortages were the result of weak data for effective planning, inadequate capacity to train and pay health workers, and fragmentation and poor coordination across the health workforce life-cycle. Ten years and billions of dollars later, the problem still persists. The time has passed for short-term fixes to health workforce shortages. As the largest source of global health resources, AIDS donors must begin to address the long-term problems underlying the shortages and the effects of their efforts on the health workforce more broadly.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa

89. What Is Poverty Reduction?

Author:
Owen Barder
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
There is a healthy debate about how to achieve poverty reduction in developing countries, but not enough discussion of what we mean by “poverty reduction.” “Poverty reduction” is often used as a short-hand for promoting economic growth that will permanently lift as many people as possible over a poverty line. But there are many different objectives that are consistent with “poverty reduction,” and we have to make choices between them. There are trade-offs between tackling current and future poverty, between helping as many poor people as possible and focusing on those in chronic poverty, and between measures that tackle the causes of poverty and those which deal with the symptoms. Because donors focus on just one dimension of poverty reduction (growth) they marginalise other legitimate objectives such as reducing chronic poverty or providing social services in countries that cannot otherwise afford them.
Topic:
Development, Environment, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, Third World, and Foreign Aid

90. The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence

Author:
David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The most-noted studies on the impact of microcredit on households are based on a survey fielded in Bangladesh in the 1990s. Contradictions among them have produced lasting controversy and confusion. Pitt and Khandker (PK, 1998) apply a quasi-experimental design to 1991–92 data; they conclude that microcredit raises household consumption, especially when lent to women. Khandker (2005) applies panel methods using a 1999 resurvey; he concurs and extrapolates to conclude that microcredit helps the extremely poor even more than the moderately poor. But using simpler estimators than PK, Morduch (1999) finds no impact on the level of consumption in the 1991–92 data, even as he questions PK's identifying assumptions. He does find evidence that microcredit reduces consumption volatility. Partly because of the sophistication of PK's Maximum Likelihood estimator, the conflicting results were never directly confronted and reconciled. We end the impasse. A replication exercise shows that all these studies' evidence for impact is weak. As for PK's headline results, we obtain opposite signs. But we do not conclude that lending to women does harm. Rather, all three studies appear to fail in expunging endogeneity. We conclude that for non-experimental methods to retain a place in the program evaluator's portfolio, the quality of the claimed natural experiments must be high and demonstrated.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Bangladesh, South Asia, and Asia