Journal ArticleDOI
What explains the success or failure of structural adjustment programs
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This article examined a database of 220 World Bank-supported reform programs to identify why adjustment programs succeed or fail, and found that a few political economy variables can successfully predict the outcome of an adjustment loan 75 percent of the time.Abstract:
In the 1980s development assistance shifted largely from financing investments (such as roads and dams) to promoting policy reform. This change came because of a growing awareness that developing countries were held back more by poor policies than by a lack of finance for investment. After nearly 20 years' experience with policy-based or conditional lending, there have now been many studies of adjustment lending, most of which take a case-study approach. Many conclude that policy-based lending works if countries have decided on their own to reform. The authors examine a database of 220 World Bank-supported reform programs to identify why adjustment programs succeed or fail. They find that a few political economy variables can successfully predict the outcome of an adjustment loan 75 percent of the time. Variables under the World Bank's control -- resources devoted to preparation and supervision or number of conditions -- have no relationship with an adjustment program's success or failure. What development agencies must do, then, is select promising candidates for adjustment support. When the candidates is a poor selection, devoting more administrative resources or imposing more conditions will not increase the likelihood of successful reform. To improve its success rate with adjustment lending, the World Bank must become more selective and do a better job of understanding which environments are promising for reform and which are not. That is likely to lead to fewer adjustment loans, unless there is a significant change in the number of promising reformers. To become more effective at supporting policy reform, the agency must be willing to accept that this may lead to smaller volumes of lending.read more
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Dissertation
Does aid educate? : dynamic panel evidence on the role of official development assistance in determining outcomes in primary education
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate the effectiveness of official development assistance in determining primary education enrolment and completion, as well as the differential role that the quality of recipient country governance and presence of conflict play in influencing its impact.
Journal ArticleDOI
Different Strokes? Common and Uncommon Responses to Financial Crises
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of conventional macroeconomic models reveals that countries can afford to run expansionary policies to restore internal balance only if they can afford not to ignore the requirements for external balance, which does not depend on whether macroeconomic policies were inappropriate before the crisis hit.
Journal ArticleDOI
The rise and demise of European budget support: political economy of collective European Union donor action
TL;DR: In this article, the Paris Declaration, while formulating the right principles, carries a number of assumptions regarding the (capability of donors to act collectively, however, fails to include the political economy of European donors and their own political, institutional and individual incentives that undermined this capability substantially.
From Lome to Cotonou: The new EU-ACP agreement
C. Bjoernskov,E. Krivonos +1 more
Abstract: This working paper describes and evaluates the Cotonou Agreement signed by the EU and the ACP group in June 2000. The Agreement is compared to the recently ratified EU-South Africa Agreement and the US Caribbean Basin Initiative. The paper reviews three cases of sensitive products bananas, sugar and beef and veal, in which the partners have special interests. It is found that the Cotonou Agreement could have a beneficial impact on ACP countries by increasing trade in sensitive products; the gains are therefore unevenly distributed across countries and regions. Moreover, part of these potential gains will be diverted to LDCs both within and outside the group as a result of the recently adopted EU ‘Everything but Arms’ Initiative. Countries not involved in trade in sensitive products might expect a minor impact of the Agreement, mainly as a result of a restructuring of EU development aid and a derived increase in regional trade among the ACP countries. However, the extent of the beneficial impact will depend crucially on the outcome of future negotiations for Regional Economic Partnership Agreements with groups of countries within the ACP group. These negotiations could prove to be difficult, in part due to the large differences between ACP countries and a lack of economic incentives for LDCs within the group to strike new deals. To be administrable for developing countries, the regional agreements should be kept simple. * This working paper is part of the project ”WTO Negotiations and Changes in National Agricultural and Trade Policies: Consequences for Developing Countries”, which is carried out by the Agricultural Policy Division, SJFI, in cooperation with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, USA. The project is primarily financed by the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DANIDA, Denmark. The authors would like to thank Chantal Pohl Nielsen, Søren E. Frandsen, Kim Lind and Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla for valuable comments and discussions.
Book ChapterDOI
What Influences World Bank Project Evaluations
TL;DR: This article examined whether geopolitical or institutional factors influence ratings and found evidence that bureaucratic factors influence selection and that one geopolitical variable (nonpermanent United Nations Security Council membership) impinges on ratings.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions
William Easterly,Ross Levine +1 more
TL;DR: This article showed that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that high ethnic fragmentation explains a significant part of most of these characteristics.
Posted Content
Aid, Policies, and Growth
TL;DR: Burnside and Dollar as mentioned in this paper used a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid, economic policies, and growth of per capita GDP and found that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies.
Posted Content
A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality
Klaus Deininger,Lyn Squire +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income is presented, and the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on Gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups' income shares.
Journal ArticleDOI
The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy . A World Bank Policy Research Report. London: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvii, 289 pp.
Journal ArticleDOI
A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality
Klaus Deininger,Lyn Squire +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income is presented, and the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on Gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups' income shares.