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on Africa |
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Issue of 2006‒09‒16
four papers chosen by Suzanne McCoskey Foreign Service Institute, US Department of State |
| By: | Sanjay G. Reddy; Camelia Minoiu |
| Abstract: | We examine the phenomenon of real-income stagnation in a large cross-section of countries during the last four decades. Stagnation is defined as negligible or negative growth extending over a number of years. We find that stagnation has affected more than three fifths of countries (103 out of 168). Stagnating countries were more likely to have been poor, in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, conflict ridden and dependent on primary commodity exports. Stagnation is recurrent: countries that were stagnators in the 1960s had a likelihood of 75 percent of having been stagnators in the 1990s. |
| Keywords: | real income stagnation, patterns of economic growth |
| JEL: | O10 O11 O47 |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:une:wpaper:28&r=afr |
| By: | Kenny, Charles |
| Abstract: | There are significant weaknesses in some of the traditional justifications for assuming that aid will foster development. This paper looks at what the cross-country aid effectiveness literature and World Bank Operations Evaluation Department reviews have suggested about effective aid, first in terms of promoting income growth, and then for promoting other goals. This review forms the basis for a discussion of recommendations to improve aid effectiveness and a discussion of effective aid allocation. Given the multiple potential objectives for aid, there is no one right answer. However, it appears that there are a number of reforms to aid practices and distribution that might help to deliver a more significant return to aid resources. We should provide aid where institutions are already strong, where they can be strengthened with the help of donor resources, or where they can be bypassed with limited damage to existing institutional capacity. The importance of institutions to aid outcomes, as well as the fungibility of aid flows, suggests that programmatic aid should be expanded in countries with strong institutions, while project aid should be supported based on its ability to transfer knowledge and test new practices and support global public good provision rather than (merely) as a tool of financial resource transfer. The importance of institutions also suggests that we should be cautious in our expectations regarding the results of increased aid flows. |
| Keywords: | Development Economics & Aid Effectiveness,Banks & Banking Reform,School Health,Population Policies,Economic Theory & Research |
| Date: | 2006–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4005&r=afr |
| By: | Martin Gassebner (Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland); Alexander Keck (World Trade Organization (WTO). Economic Research and Statistics Division); Robert Teh (World Trade Organization (WTO). Economic Research and Statistics Division) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of major disasters on trade flows using a gravity model(170 countries, 1962-2004). As a conservative estimate, an additional disaster reduces imports on average by 0,2% and exports by 0.1%. Despite the apparent persistence of bilateral trade volumes, the impact of catastrophes depends on the democracy level and size of the affected country. In autocracies, exports and imports are significantly reduced: had Togo been struck by a major disaster in 2000, it would have lost 6.8% of its imports and 8.2% of its exports. Democratic countries' exports suffer modest decreases, while imports are hardly affected |
| Keywords: | International trade, disasters, gravity model, governance bounds analysis. |
| JEL: | F14 P52 P48 C23 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kof:wpskof:06-139&r=afr |
| By: | James Habyarimana (Georgetown University and IZA Bonn); Macartan Humphreys (Columbia University); Daniel N. Posner (University of California, Los Angeles); Jeremy Weinstein (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through which this relationship operates. To gain analytic leverage on the question of why ethnicity matters, we identify three families of mechanisms – what we term preference, technology, and strategy mechanisms. Our empirical strategy is to identify and run a series of experimental games that permit us to examine these mechanisms in isolation and then to compare the importance of ethnicity in each. Results from experimental games conducted with a random sample of 300 subjects in Kampala’s slums reveal that successful collective action among homogenous ethnic communities in urban Uganda is attributable to the existence of norms and institutions that facilitate the sanctioning of non-contributors. We find no evidence for a commonality of tastes within ethnic groups, for greater degrees of altruism toward co-ethnics, or for an impact of shared ethnicity on the productivity of teams. |
| Keywords: | ethnic diversity, collective action, public goods, field experiments |
| JEL: | D71 H41 J15 O10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2272&r=afr |