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on Development |
| By: | Vibhuti Mendiratta (UMR DIAL- IRD) |
| Abstract: | (english) Impact evaluation has recently gained significant momentum with good reason, as they help to quantify the social impacts of interventions. With increased importance being attached to evaluation, one spillover effect could be capacity development in African countries with increased participation of African universities and local teams. It is in this respect that this report sheds some light on the recent trends in the impact evaluations. Collating information on evaluations from key sources, we produced a database to highlight key trends in the evolution of impact evaluations. We find a surge in the number of evaluations since 2004, 77% starting in 2004 and later. In terms of the thematic composition, 27% of the evaluations are health oriented followed by education, agriculture and microfinance as the key sectors. Another interesting trend observed is that the evaluations are largely restricted to Anglophone countries, primarily Kenya followed by Uganda. While African partners (like local NGOs, Ministries etc.) have been involved in different stages of program implementation in the country under consideration, only 11% of the studies on which we have information have an African author involved in writing the research paper. We thus conclude that we are a long way away from heavy involvement of African nationals in impact evaluations. Continued commitment from various stakeholders would be imperative for such an initiative to work and gather momentum. The database is available on African Impact Evaluation Network (http://www.africaien.org/impactevaluation- projects-dataset/). _________________________________ (français) Depuis une dizaine d’années, la réflexion sur les politiques de développement et leur efficacité a sensiblement évolué en adoptant une approche pragmatique consistant à évaluer de manière la plus rigoureuse possible l’impact de mesures et politiques de développement avant de les appliquer à d’autres contexte et de les généraliser. En rassemblant le plus grand nombre d’informations disponibles, ce rapport dresse un bilan des études d’impact (EI) menées en Afrique et s’interroge sur l’implication des chercheurs africains dans leur conception et analyse. Il apparaît que les EI se sont sensiblement développées en Afrique qu’à partir de 2004, 77% d’entre elles ayant été initiées depuis cette date prioritairement en santé, éducation, agriculture et micro-finance. Ces évaluations sont en grande partie menées dans les pays anglophones, plus particulièrement au Kenya et en Ouganda. Même si des partenaires africains ont pu participer aux études, dans seulement 11% des cas des chercheurs africains ont participé à la publication du rapport d’analyse. Nous concluons donc que les EI sont loin de constituer un levier pour la recherche en Afrique et que les différentes parties prenantes devraient prendre des mesures pour qu’une telle impulsion ait lieu. La base est disponible sur le site du réseau africain des évaluations d’impact (African Impact Evaluation Network à l’adresse suivante, http://www.africaien.org/impact-evaluati on-projects-dataset/). |
| Keywords: | Africa, Impact evaluation |
| JEL: | O55 O10 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201113&r=dev |
| By: | Siegel, Melissa (UNU-MERIT/MGSoG, University of Maastricht); Fransen, Sonja (UNU-MERIT/MGSoG, University of Maastricht) |
| Abstract: | Mobile remittances have a high development potential as they hold the promise of providing quick, easy and cheap money transfers. In Africa mobile phone usage has increased sharply and mobile banking providers are extending their services, enabling greater opportunities for mobile remittances. The rise of mobile banking in Africa, however, differs substantially across countries, mainly due to a lack of financial infrastructure. Consequently, the opportunities that mobile banking offers for mobile remittances vary geographically. The services provided do not always meet the needs of remittance senders and the African remittances market is generally under-acknowledged as an important market by providers. Restrictive financial regulations play a key role as well. Mobile remittances have the potential to become an important and revolutionary tool for remittances sending in Africa. Effective policies should therefore address the limitations in the regulatory and financial infrastructure for mobile banking to become the foundation for mobile remittances. |
| Keywords: | Remittances, mobile remittances, Africa, innovation, technology, development |
| JEL: | F24 L63 O15 O17 O33 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:unumer:2012018&r=dev |
| By: | Ramirez, N.F.; Gamboa, L.F.; Bedi, A.S.; Sparrow, R.A. |
| Abstract: | The importance of ever-earlier interventions to help children reach their physical and cognitive potential is increasingly being recognized. In part, as a result of this, in developing countries, antenatal care is becoming an important element of strategies to prevent child stunting in utero and later. Notwithstanding their policy relevance and substantial expansion, empirical evidence on the role of antenatal care (ANC) programs in combating stunting is scarce. This study analyzes the role of ANC programs in determining the level and distribution of child stunting in three Andean countries - Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru - where since the 1990s, expanding access to such care has been an explicit policy intervention to tackle child malnutrition. We find that the use of such services is associated with a reduction in the level of malnutrition and at the same time access to such services is relatively equally distributed. While this is a positive sign, it also suggests that further expansion of ANC programs is unlikely to play a large role in reducing inequalities in malnutrition. |
| Keywords: | antenatal care;child malnutrition;inequality decomposition;height for age |
| Date: | 2012–03–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:euriss:536&r=dev |
| By: | Minquan Liu (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)) |
| Abstract: | There are likely to be many factors which have together shaped the current pattern of growth and equity in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Among them are the foundations laid in the pre-1978 era, especially in respect of land-related institutional reforms and social sector investments. These factors successfully complemented the subsequent export and foreign direct investment promotion strategies the PRC followed in the post-1978 years. However, given the large size of the PRC, while these strategies have helped to kick-start its economic take-off, the long-run growth of the country cannot depend on it. It will be important for the PRC in the forthcoming decades to expand its own domestic demand and renew social sector investments. Among other things, it will need to improve on its current income distributions. In particular, as well as wage increases, it will be important for the PRC to expand its social protection programs. This will help not only to boost its domestic demand, but also, more importantly, to contribute to a renewal and expansion of its human capital accumulation. In the long run, there is nothing more important than this if the PRC is to continue on its growth track, to modernize, and to catch up with today’s developed nations. Superior pre-1978 human capital accumulations have helped the PRC to compete with and outperform other similarly positioned economies in the decades before; continued growth of the economy and continued improvements of the living standards of its people in the forthcoming decades will require vast amounts of new investment in human capital. And to this, increased investments by the government, whether through direct spending or increased levels of social protection, may well prove to be of special importance. |
| Keywords: | pattern of growth, equity and growth, Income Distribution |
| JEL: | O15 O53 F14 N35 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:develo:23205&r=dev |
| By: | Masahiko Aoki (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)) |
| Abstract: | Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea : M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post demographic-transition). But there are also marked differences in the onset, duration, and institutional forms of these phases across these economies. In order to understand these differences, this paper explores the agrarian origins of institutions in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan (and briefly ChosÅn Korea) and their path-dependent transformations over those phases. In doing so, the paper employs game-theoretic reasoning and interpretations of divergent institutional evolution between China and Japan, which also clarifies the simplicity of prevailing arguments that identify East Asian developmental and institutional features with authoritarianism, collectivism, kinship-dominance, Confucianism and the like. Finally, the paper examines the relevance of the foregoing developmental discussions to the institutional agendas faced by China and Japan in their respective emergent phase-transitions. In what way can China avoid the “middle income trapâ€? What institutional shortcomings become evident from the Fukushima catastrophe and how can they be overcome in an aging Japan? |
| Keywords: | phases of economic development, institutional forms, Institution, game-theoretic reasoning, path-dependent |
| JEL: | J11 N15 N35 N55 O15 O43 O53 P51 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:develo:23196&r=dev |
| By: | Takashi Kihara (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines several indicators of effective development aid, focusing on the contributions of major bilateral donors. The empirical analyses of selectivity for effective aid delivery revealed that, taking a long-term and regional perspective, some major donors including Japan have been as selective in delivering their aid as some countries well-known for their selective aid delivery, such as Denmark. Japan has provided higher aid for the countries with better policy and governance, and higher grant aid for the countries with lower income, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Indexes for donor proliferation and aid fragmentation, which measure increased transaction costs of recipient countries, were calculated using methods set out in existing studies on the topic, but over the longer term and by region. It is demonstrated that aid from some major donors in Asia, the Pacific, and Europe, including Japan, has proliferated less than the aid programs of most other countries. Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by Japan since 1990 has been more closely correlated with the growth of GDP per capita of recipient countries than that of other donors. The growth acceleration effects of short-impact aid (SIA) such as aid for infrastructure have been stronger than those of other categories of aid such as aid for education, aid for health, or humanitarian emergency aid. While other major donors reduced the share of SIA in their total ODA in the 1990s and the early 2000s, Japan maintained its share of such aid to sustain the growth of recipient countries. The aid-growth nexus also demonstrates the larger contribution of Japan than those of other major donors to the growth of recipients. Overall, aid from some donor countries, including Japan, that ranked lower in short-term assessments has turned out to be of good quality in the longer run or from regional perspectives, a finding confirmed by recent literature on the quality of aid. |
| Keywords: | development aid, bilateral donors, aid fragmentation, aid-growth nexus, ODA |
| JEL: | F35 O10 O40 O43 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:develo:23194&r=dev |
| By: | Julan Du (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)); Qing He; Oliver M. Rui |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes consumption risk sharing among provinces in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during 1980–2007. The analysis finds that 9.4% of shocks to gross provincial product are smoothed by the interprovincial fiscal transfer system. This system also cushions a relatively large percentage of province-specific shocks in coastal areas. Using a variety of indicators, we explored nonfiscal channels of consumption risk sharing. We found that the migration of rural labor to urban areas and the remittance of migrant wages play an important role in promoting interprovincial consumption risk sharing in inland PRC provinces. In contrast, the extent of risk sharing through financial intermediation and capital markets is very limited. These factors have resulted in a low degree of risk sharing among provinces, especially during the last decade |
| Keywords: | consumption risk sharing, the People’s Republic of China, fiscal transfer system, interprovincial |
| JEL: | O16 O53 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:develo:23202&r=dev |
| By: | Adenutsi, Deodat E. |
| Abstract: | An attempt has been made in this paper to examine the impact of international remittances on poverty and income inequality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In carrying out the study, 34 SSA countries for which relevant data are available, between 1980 and 2009, were sampled for the poverty analysis whilst a sample size of 36 was used in the remittances-income inequality exploration. A set of dynamic panel-data models was estimated using system Generalized Method of Moments. It was found that remittances have significant poverty-alleviating effect, with the poorest of the poor being the least beneficiaries. Additionally, International remittances have income equalisation effects in countries with relatively narrower income gap, but with an intensifying income-inequality aggravating effects in countries with relatively wider income gap. It is, thus, concluded that although remittances have huge potentials to alleviate poverty and equilibrate incomes in SSA, these remittances have size-effects to the detriment of relatively poorer countries and countries with relatively higher income gap. Therefore, the paper recommends that, although the poverty-alleviating effects and income equalisation effects of remittances cannot be downplayed, it is imprudent for SSA policymakers to overly exclusively on remittances as a poverty-reduction strategy towards sustainable socioeconomic development of the sub-region. |
| Keywords: | Remittances; Poverty; Inequality; Developing Countries; system GMM; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | F22 D63 O15 N37 I3 C33 F24 |
| Date: | 2011–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:37130&r=dev |