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Publications (17)
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid, Social Policy and Development
Working Paper
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Notwithstanding the unprecedented attention devoted to reducing poverty and fostering human development via scaling up social sector spending, there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical work on the question of whether social spending is effective in achieving these goals. This paper examines...
Position Paper
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This position paper on Aid and the Social Sectors was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-todate overview and analysis of an extraordinarily important issue in the development field: The contribution of foreign aid to human development.Social sector policy and the services that they provide are recognised for their intrinsic values and instrumental qualities for the functioning of individuals in particular, and the development strategies of countries more general. There is overwhelming...
Research Brief
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While the majority of interventions against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria had positive short-term effects, these were frequently not translated into long-term sustainable results. Cash transfers may have the potential of reducing HIV transmissions but the effect is so far insignificant...
Research Brief
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Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive impacts are seen in Africa. Women tend to benefit...
Working Paper
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– Implementation of the New Aid Effectiveness Agenda in Health and Education in Zambia
There is a growing interest in the debate on aid effectiveness for assessing the impact of aid not only on economic growth and poverty reduction, but also on intermediate outcomes such as health and education. This paper reviews evidence from recent in-depth country work on the impact of government...
Research Brief
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– Crucial for the Spread of Social Protection Programmes
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 schemes seem to be subjected to more evaluation...
Working Paper
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– Why Does Aid Not Address Poverty (Much)?
Aid is not generally aimed at the poorest people, though most multilateral or bilateral agencies would like to think they get included. However, donors’ strategies are generally blind to differentiation among the poor, and have not improved in this respect. The special provisions for the least...
Working Paper
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– Better Policies? Better Politics?
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 transfer programmes in developing countries, one...
Research Brief
If food aid is to be more effective donors need to consider both the goals of the aid, and its economic implications. In May 2012, shortly before the annual G8 summit, the Obama administration announced the ‘New Alliance for Food Security’. The project enlists 45 private companies who are to invest...
Working Paper
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Dramatically increased international agricultural commodity prices from 2007 to mid-2008 brought food inflation and greater incidence of poverty and malnutrition to developing countries. Higher food prices in 2011 threaten to repeat that crisis. The international community responded strongly to...
The fourteen members of the African CFA Franc Zone represent the largest monetary unions in the southern hemisphere, predating the European Monetary Union by decades. With monetary unions planned for other parts of Africa in the near future, this book focuses on some of the key challenges facing the...
Book Chapter
– Evidence from the West African Economic and Monetary Union
From the book:
Macroeconomic Policy in the Franc Zone
Book Chapter
– Time-Series and Cross-Country Evidence from the Franc Zone Countries of Sub-Saharan Africa
From the book:
Macroeconomic Policy in the Franc Zone
Working Paper
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This paper brings out that poverty increased massively in the wake of the 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc, despite a significant recovery of economic growth. Although this increase affected all the social groups, it fell mostly on the urban poor. An analytical model is presented, which explains...
Working Paper
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– Time-series and Cross-country Evidence from the CFA-zone Countries of sub-Saharan Africa
The causes of the slow growth of CFA countries are investigated. There is little difference in this respect between the CFA and other sub-Saharan African countries. Since 1970, GDP growth in the CFA countries has shown no significant trend but one or two medium-term fluctuations (positive in 1979-83...
Displaying 16 of 17 results