World Institute for Development Economics Research

About: World Institute for Development Economics Research is a facility organization based out in Helsinki, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Poverty & Population. The organization has 110 authors who have published 525 publications receiving 17316 citations.

Multilateral and Bilateral Loans Versus Grants: Issues and Evidence

Abstract: This paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans. A number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries and 72 recipient countries. Based on the tests, we observe that for bilateral donors, past grant-loan mix (and, hence, reflows from past transfers) do not influence the volume of current resource transfers. Our tests also show that the rate of official borrowing by the recipients (and, by deduction, the extent of their past debt burden) is positively influenced by the extent of the concessionality of such loans - irrespective of whether it is in the form of subsidised interest rates or longer grace periods. The paper concludes with a review of the circumstances in which grants, soft loans and non-concessional loans might have their respective comparative advantage, as well as a discussion of the need, so as to overcome the negative incentive problems of soft loans, for a typical concessional loan package to be separated into two constituent parts. This would enable the recipient to be given the grant component and the option to take from the non-concessional loan component as much as desired.

Innovation and Competitiveness: Trends in Unit Prices in Global Trade

Abstract: This paper seeks to build on theory, to develop new methods for understanding the nature and basis of sectoral and national competitive advantage, and to do so with a temporal perspective. Neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economics perspectives (which place innovation at the forefront of accumulation) highlight the importance of economic rents, barriers to entry and core competencies. There is no one measure that adequately reflects these barriers to entry, and much of the research has been concerned to generate proxies, each of which is in itself partial, but which together provide a comprehensive picture. During the late 1970s, preliminary work was undertaken on the unit price of UK trade as an indicator of relative technological competence. However, this approach has largely been neglected since then, receiving only sporadic attention in US literature, and at high levels of product aggregation. This paper utilizes this approach to try and reflect the dynamic process of shifting competitive advantage ...