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Digital technologies can be a critical channel in boosting economic growth and achieving Sustainable Development Goals. During crises like COVID-19, digitalization can facilitate the reception of remittances from relatives and friends. We analyze the effects of migrant remittances (MRs) on economic growth in ECOWAS countries with a special emphasis on the role of digitalization. The simultaneous equations and the seemingly unrelated regression method are used with data spanning from 1980 to 2017. Findings show that digitization is not a channel for transmitting the effects of MRs on economic growth in ECOWAS countries. However, digitalization constitutes a catalyst of the effects of MRs on economic growth in non-WAEMU countries, while it does not in WAEMU (a sub-regional block of ECOWAS). Nevertheless, remittances contribute to human capital accumulation, investment, and consumption in WAEMU countries. Policies aiming at strengthening digitization are welcome to foster the effect of MRs on countries' economies in ECOWAS, in general, and WAEMU in particular.Les technologies digitales (ou numériques) peuvent être un vecteur essentiel pour stimuler la croissance économique et pour atteindre les objectifs de développement durable. Lors de crises comme celle de la COVID-19, la digitalisation peut permettre de recevoir des envois de fonds de la part de parents et d'amis. Nous analysons les effets des envois de fonds des travailleurs migrants sur la croissance économique dans les pays de la CEDEAO, avec un accent particulier sur le rôle de la digitalisation. Nous utilisons les équations simultanées et la méthode SUR, pour analyser des données couvrant la période de 1980 à 2017. Les résultats montrent que, dans les pays de la CEDEAO, la digitalisation n'est pas un canal de transmission de l’effet des envois de fonds des travailleurs migrants sur la croissance économique. Cependant, la digitalisation constitue un catalyseur des effets des envois de fonds des travailleurs migrants sur la croissance économique dans les pays hors UEMOA contrairement à ceux de l'UEMOA (un bloc sous-régional de la CEDEAO). Néanmoins, les envois de fonds contribuent à l'accumulation de capital humain, à l'investissement et à la consommation dans les pays de l'UEMOA. Les politiques visant à renforcer le processus de digitalisation sont les bienvenues pour favoriser l'effet des envois de fonds des travailleurs migrants sur les économies des pays de la CEDEAO, en général, et de l'UEMOA en particulier.

To achieve sustainable future for all, United Nations’ (UNs’) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs-2030) reinforced the formulation of social, economic and human development policies. Pakistan is a country with high population growth rate, among top ten recipients of foreign remittances but facing an acute problem of stagnant human development outcomes over the years. Of note, Pakistan’s economic growth is considered as growth without human face (see Easterly in The political economy of growth without development: A case study of Pakistan, 2001). It is, therefore, important from public policy point of view to understand the short-and long-run dynamics of the relationships between important social, demographic and economic factors. Accordingly, this paper investigates the short-and long-run relationships between population growth, government social spending, foreign remittances inflow and aggregate level of human development in Pakistan using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration and error correction models. The cointegration test results showed that there is cointegration among the variables to proceed with the estimations of long-run relationships. Our empirical results confirm the existence of short-and long-run relationships between population growth, remittances inflow and human development in Pakistan. Population growth inversely while remittances inflow positively influenced Pakistan’s human development status both in the short-and long-run. The empirical findings of our study call for designing and implementing robust development policies—that result in effective and sustainable human development—mainly towards viewing population from a more humanitarian and equitable perspective in Pakistan.

Over the last 15 years, the agricultural economics and development literature has amply highlighted success stories of smallholder farmers in developing countries, illustrating their increased engagement and integration with markets, in other words, higher rates of commercialisation. Yet, this seeming ‘success’ should not detract from the large proportion of farmers who, through engaging in high-value market chains, face high risks that often limit the extent of their engagement. This study, across four African contexts in Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, strives to better understand smallholder participation in agricultural commercialisation. Using new detailed cross-sectional household-level data, from the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) consortium, collected over 2017–2018, we analyse assets as a determining factor for localised patterns smallholder commercialisation. Applying asset-based thresholds, we capture commercialisation ‘capacity’—an indicator of the household’s commercialisation potential and ability to respond to risks. Despite the possibility to increase commercialisation as well as institutional arrangements that may reduce risk, such as contract farming, benefits from linkages with medium-scale farmers or returns from specific crop types, we find that households may yet be constrained by lower capacity. Hence, the need for targeted support for those at the margins and with limited assets; with the most pronounced and significant constraints for lower capacity households in study areas in Tanzania. These results can better inform development policies for agriculture where it is important to be able to specifically target households rather than a one size fits all approach.

Many post-conflict states, despite large-scale development aid, continue to experience chronic underdevelopment. This research will use institutional economics and the example of Kosovo to examine the relationship between institutional structures and economic insecurity, as an indicator of development outcomes. This paper argues that while Kosovo’s parallel institutional structure is quite unique, the structure and uncertain nature of Kosovo’s post-conflict institutions make them weak which is a source of economic insecurity which undermines development efforts. This paper also refutes some of the primacy given to formal institutions as a source of development and concludes that the makeup of formal and informal institutions in Kosovo proves to have a somewhat complex relationship to economic insecurity and further to overall development outcomes. The paper concludes that a focus on developing the quality of institutions in Kosovo may be an effective development policy as it could help to decrease economic insecurity.

Globally, countries have resorted to social distancing, travel restrictions and economic lockdowns to reduce transmission of COVID-19. The socioeconomic costs of these blunt measures are expected to be high, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where many live hand-to-mouth and lack social safety nets. Social Accounting Matrix multiplier model results show that Ghana’s urban lockdown, although in force for only three weeks in April 2020, has likely caused GDP to fall by 27.9% during that period, while an additional 3.8 million Ghanaians temporarily became poor. Compared to the government’s revised GDP growth rate of 1.5% for 2020, the model predicts a contraction of 0.6 to 6.3% for 2020, depending on the speed of the recovery. The US$200 million budgeted for Ghana’s Coronavirus Alleviation Program will close only a small part of the estimated US$ 2.3 billion GDP gap between the fast recovery scenario and government’s revised GDP trajectory.

COVID-19 has caused unprecedented health, economic and societal impacts across the world, including many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The pandemic and its fallout have laid bare deep-seated social and economic inequalities with marginalised groups being at greater risk of infection and being disproportionately affected by containment measures and their socioeconomic consequences. Stigma is a central element to such inequalities but remains largely overlooked in the debate on the response to COVID-19, including in LMICs. Yet we know from experiences with other infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and Ebola that disease-related stigma is detrimental to halting and controlling pandemics and achieving equitable development. Emerging evidence suggests that stigma associated with COVID-19 is already taking hold. This paper assesses potential driving factors of COVID-19-related stigma, and how this intersects with existing stigma fault lines and explores mechanisms through which COVID-19-related stigma may be counteracted, with a focus on LMICs.La COVID-19 a eu un impact sanitaire, économique et sociétal sans précédent à travers le monde, y compris dans de nombreux pays à revenu faible ou intermédiaire (PRFI). La pandémie et ses retombées ont mis à nu de profondes inégalités sociales et économiques, les groupes marginalisés étant plus exposés au risque d’infection et étant touchés de façon disproportionnée par les mesures de confinement et par leurs conséquences socioéconomiques. La stigmatisation est au centre de ces inégalités mais reste largement négligée dans les débats sur la réponse à la COVID-19, y compris dans les PRFI. Grâce à l’expérience que nous avons sur d'autres maladies infectieuses telles que le VIH/SIDA et la maladie à virus Ebola, nous savons pourtant que la stigmatisation liée à une maladie empêche de contrôler et de stopper les pandémies et ne permet pas un développement équitable. De nouvelles preuves suggèrent que la stigmatisation associée à la COVID-19 gagne déjà du terrain. Cet article évalue les facteurs potentiels de stigmatisation liée à la COVID-19, analyse comment cela se recoupe avec les failles existantes de la stigmatisation et explore les mécanismes par lesquels on peut lutter contre la stigmatisation liée à la COVID-19, en mettant l'accent sur les PRFI.

Limited availability and accessibility of the public health care facilities have resulted in an increased burden of financing healthcare in developing countries. Therefore, we analyse the inpatient-care financing strategies in India using healthcare and morbidity rounds (1994/1995, 2004, and 2014). Although income and saving is the predominant source of financing healthcare expense constituting a major channel in 70% of the inpatient episodes; the poorest 40% of the households rely more on borrowings, which pushes low-income families into debt and poverty trap. The educated, wealthy, and female tend to rely more on income/saving, while a greater number of visits to the hospital, long duration of stay, and chronic illness are positively associated with the borrowing and sales of assets. Hence, the health care policy, guided by the agenda of Universal Health Cover, should aim to extend health insurance for the chronic recurring illnesses that entail distressed financing strategies.

Information-technology-enabled services (ITES) has become a sector of promise for many low- and middle-income economies seeking to leapfrog industrialization and build knowledge-intensive economies. Yet as a sector defined by accelerating processes of commodification and skill elimination, its long-term developmental promise must be carefully scrutinised. Analysing the development of the sector in India, the Philippines and Kenya the paper reveals both the contextual nature of past successful ITES policies and their developmental vulnerabilities. Drawing on literature on industrial policies and global value chains and production networks, the paper critiques the existing policy approaches by arguing that they are largely focussed on enabling value and employment creation and that they pay insufficient attention to questions of value capture and long-term socio-economic transformation.

In recent decades, Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced significant political and economic liberalisations, and thus foreign direct investment (FDI) is likely to react to the acute policy implications associated with elections. Hence, in the present work, the relationship between FDI and elections is investigated among 37 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period 1972–2012. The results of the generalised method of moments (GMM) analysis show that FDI is deterred by both executive and legislative/parliamentary elections, as well as by behavioural unfairness and liberation elections but less affected by perceptual unfairness and post-election violence. Sensitivity analysis further shows that these negative effects are not significantly affected by the extent of resource endowment or political liberalisation.

Within the framework of a panel model of 74 developing countries for the period 1984–2013, we show that structural change can be impacted by the quality of institutions. We use two subsamples: the first composed of countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and the second composed of the other developing countries included in the sample. We show that international integration confines the countries of SSA to low-value-added production. It appears that, for these countries, low levels of institution quality and resource-based specialization hinder structural change and prevent them from benefiting from the positive effects of international trade. For the countries of SSA, international trade has a deleterious effect.

Amidst calls for making food systems more sustainable, new unsustainable food transformations unfold alongside economic development. Explanations for unsustainable food transformations in emerging economies vary greatly, but there is widespread agreement that demand from new middle classes play a crucial role. Yet this demand is to a large extent co-created by systems of provision, and middle-class consumers are constantly navigating food transformations in a search for healthy and safe food. Focusing on Vietnam's dramatic food transformations, and combining attention to the political economy of food with a social practice approach to consumption, the paper zooms in on the how middle-class households in Hanoi negotiate the rapid transformations of food systems and food environments. The paper concludes that new thinking on sustainable food systems is urgently needed and argues that vital insights can be gained by studying food practices and their interaction with everyday geographies of consumption.Dans un contexte d’appels à rendre les systèmes alimentaires plus pérennes, de nouvelles transformations alimentaires non pérennes accompagnent le développement économique. Les facteurs qui expliquent ces transformations alimentaires non pérennes dans les économies émergentes varient considérablement, mais il est largement admis que la demande des nouvelles classes moyennes joue un rôle crucial. Pourtant, cette demande est en grande partie co-créée par les systèmes d'approvisionnement, et les consommateurs de la classe moyenne évoluent constamment sur le sujet des transformations alimentaires, à la recherche d'une alimentation saine et sûre. Cet article porte son attention sur les transformations alimentaires spectaculaires du Vietnam et combine un regard sur l’économie politique de l'alimentation avec une approche de la consommation par la pratique sociale. Il se concentre ainsi sur la façon dont les ménages de la classe moyenne à Hanoï approchent les transformations rapides des systèmes alimentaires et des environnements alimentaires. L'article en conclut qu'une réflexion renouvelée sur les systèmes alimentaires pérennes est nécessaire et urgente, et affirme que des informations vitales peuvent être obtenues en étudiant les pratiques alimentaires et leur interaction avec les géographies quotidiennes de la consommation.

Using a newly created dataset, this article documents the trends in top income shares for CARICOM member states during the 1960–2015 period. Belize, Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica and Haiti are high-inequality countries as compared to Trinidad & Tobago, The Bahamas, Barbados and St. Lucia. Barbados is the only low-inequality country that is converging to its high-inequality peers, while Belize experiences the greatest decline in top income share. The article argues that differential European settlement and land size are colonial origins explaining why member states are divided into high- and low-inequality groups. However, the article demonstrates the importance of policy for distributional outcomes—like the role of Offshore Financial Centres in the case of Barbados. The paper also shows how structural adjustment policies and natural disasters can account for the volatility observed in top incomes. Finally, the article proposes that the lack of inequality-reducing structural change is an important explanation for the enormous holding power of top incomes across the community.

How does corruption impact a nation’s capacity for well-being? Expanding government services and funding for health may not be effective at increasing well-being if corruption is rampant in government authorities. Therefore, both petty and grand corruption in different government bodies have the potential to greatly decrease the effectiveness of health expenditure at improving infant and child health, yet this relationship is understudied in the cross-national literature. Using two-way fixed effects models for a sample of 90 low- and middle-income nations from 1996 to 2012, I examine how the interaction between corruption in the executive and public sector and health expenditure impact infant and child mortality. The findings reveal the importance of controlling for corruption in improving the development effectiveness of health expenditure. In short, while states must have the fiscal capacity to generate enough funds for health expenditure, they must also reduce grand and petty corruption in the executive and public sectors to reduce infant and child mortality.

Diversification in rural coastal areas has been promoted for two major reasons: reducing overfishing and increasing living standards. This article investigates diversification efforts in light of coastal squeezes in central Philippines. It presents evidence from 11 coastal villages in Iloilo Province, all of these communities are confronted with overfishing, poverty and environmental change. The empirical focus is on the impact of external support as well as remittances from overseas relatives. Three results emerge. First, the impact depends on initial intra-village conditions; presuming that fishing associations are the natural go-to stakeholders can be counterproductive. Second, more attention should be paid to transforming short-term, exogenous interventions into longer-term, endogenous capabilities. Third, unlike for households with higher levels of human capital, remittances do not constitute a major diversification strategy for fisher folk. Avenues for further research are the relationships between social capital and intra-village inequality and the interrelated nature of livelihood capitals.

The resurgence of the East Asian development model has seen alarming trends of populist-authoritarianism as well as democratic reversals. Yet, the core argument—strong, unconstrained governments successfully motivate or compel compliance—is rarely assessed. This paper makes that systematic assessment with historical data and survey findings from South Korea, the prototypical East Asian model. Two findings are consequential: first, strong, unconstrained governments led to higher-than-normal disinvestments; this occurs notwithstanding in- or out-of-favour sectors. This means that government could not strong-arm or exploit out-of-favour producers to abide by policies that favour other sectors. Second, surveys analysed show that almost 40% have or would engage in political actions that challenged the government, despite the latter’s strength or autocracy. This means that citizens, of which labour is a large component, were also willing to disobey the government’s policies or directives. Together, the results challenge the model that strong government may successfully override preferences to push or even compel the compliance that underpins economic success.

Given the importance of the household as a resource allocation mechanism, considerable interest exists in its efficiency. Most of the non-experimental evidence for inefficiency comes from West African farm households in which husbands and wives pursue separate productive activities. Using experiments, we test for efficiency of spouses’ resource allocation decisions in a range of household types. In North India, we selected households that are unified, in northern Nigeria households characterised by separate spheres of economic decision making. Our other sites occupy carefully selected intermediate positions on the spectrum from unitary to separate-spheres household types. We find that, the more separate is decision making in real life, the less efficient is resource allocation in the experiments. Moreover, female control of resource allocation tends to lower efficiency, in contrast to male control. The exception is a site in northern Nigeria where female control of resource allocation is well established.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 seeks to reduce inequality by limiting the costs of remittances to less than 3% and eliminating corridors, which will cost more than 5% by 2030. Making remittances affordable is timely given that they were three times higher than official development assistance to the developing world in 2016. This comparison between remittances and aid tacitly recognises these migrants as important actors in development. The absence of other references to remittances in the SDGs demands analysis of how remittance senders are conceptualised by other ‘development actors’. This paper examines the complexities and contradictions that obscure the conceptualisation and mobilisation of Sub-Saharan African remittance senders in sustainable development. It is informed by in-depth interviews with officials from a bilateral donor agency and diaspora organisations. It applies a social constructionist framework to understand how the role of remittance senders can be reconceptualised to examine how their interventions impact sustainable development in Africa.

International efforts have taken place to alleviate poverty by adopting several obligations within the international society; one of these obligations is the provision of safe access to water and sanitation. The MDGs helped people around the world to gain improved water sources and better sanitation. Although the sectoral aid increased from 20% between 1990 and 1992 (only 4.9% distributed for water supply and sanitation (WS)) to 35% between 2002 and 2004 (only 3.9% allocated for WS), facts showed that the allocated aid was biased to social aims rather than infrastructural targets. In this study, I am focusing on the donors' commitment for WS, whether their ODA for these two sub-sectors is aligned with the intentions of the SDGs. I find that donors allocated WS aid by focusing on governments in general with higher governance indicators, and that poorer countries received a higher allocation of aid.Les efforts internationaux pour la réduction de la pauvreté ont pris forme à travers de plusieurs obligations adoptés par la société internationale. Une de ces obligations est l’approvisionnement d’accès sécuritaire à l’eau et à l’assainissement (en anglais, water supply and sanitation, WS). Les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le Développement (en anglais : Millenuim Development Goals, MDGs) ont aidé des gens partout dans le monde à bénéficier d’un meilleur approvisionnement d’eau, et d’accès a des installations sanitaires. Même si l’aide dédié e ce secteur a augmenté du 20% en 1990-1992 (que 4.9% distribué pour WS) au 35% en 2002-2004 (que 3.9% dédié à WS), les faits nous démontrent que cet aide est biaisé vers des finalités sociales plutôt que des objectifs d’infrastructure. Dans cet étude, nous nous focalisons sur l’engagement des donneurs envers WS, pour voir si leur aide officielle au développement (en anglais : Official Development Assistance, ODA) pour ces deux secteurs est aligné avec les intentions des objectifs de développement durable (en anglais : Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs). Nous trouvons que les donneurs affectent leur aide WS se focalisant généralement sur les gouvernements avec des meilleurs indicateurs de gouvernance, et que les pays les plus pauvres reçoivent une affectation d’aide supérieure.

Everyone, across borders, race and gender, is affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic-but not equally. In this paper, we examine a burgeoning new literature discussing the employment effects of COVID-19. We explore the extent to which COVID-19 will exacerbate gendered employment disparities, income generation gaps, and, ultimately, poverty gaps, using a simple microsimulation methodology. We test our approach in Colombia, which has implemented an unparalleled number of mitigation measures and has reopened its economy earlier than regional neighbors. We find that COVID-19 increases the poverty headcount to a daunting degree (between 3.0 and 9.1 pp increases). Mitigation measures vary considerably in their individual impact (up to 0.9 pp poverty reduction). A fiscally neutral Universal Basic Income program would cause larger poverty reductions. Importantly, both men and women report similar poverty impacts from the pandemic and mitigation policies, reflecting the magnitude of the downturn, the design of interventions and our own poverty measure.La pandémie de COVID-19 affecte tout le monde, indépendemment des frontières, de la race et du sexe, mais pas de la même façon. Dans cet article, nous examinons une nouvelle littérature en plein essor qui traite des effets de la COVID-19 sur l'emploi. Nous analysons dans quelle mesure la COVID-19 va exacerber les disparités d'emploi entre les sexes, les écarts de revenus et, en fin de compte, les écarts de pauvreté, en utilisant une simple méthodologie de microsimulation. Nous testons notre approche en Colombie, qui a mis en œuvre un nombre inégalé de mesures d'atténuation et a relancé son économie plus tôt que ses voisins dans la sous-région. Nous constatons que la COVID-19 provoque une redoutable augmentation du nombre de personnes pauvres (entre 3,0 et 9,1 points d'augmentation). L’impact individuel des mesures d'atténuation varie considérablement (jusqu'à 0,9 point de réduction de la pauvreté). Un revenu universel de base correspondant au principe de neutralité fiscale entraînerait une réduction plus importante de la pauvreté. Surtout, hommes et femmes signalent des impacts identiques sur la pauvreté de la pandémie et des politiques d'atténuation, ce qui reflète l'ampleur du ralentissement, la conception des interventions et notre propre mesure de la pauvreté.

The paper provides a preliminary assessment of COVID-19's impact on global poverty in the light of IMF's growth forecasts. It shows that the pandemic will erode many of the gains recorded over the last decade in terms of poverty reduction. Our baseline case suggests that globally the number of people living below US$1.90 per day will increase by 68 million in 2020 alone; this rise could however approach 100 million, should the recession turn out to be more severe than initially expected, as many practitioners fear. Without effective international support, this setback will pose a critical threat to the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The fallout from the pandemic will also exacerbate the geographic concentration of poverty, to the extent that the Least Developed Countries, with only 14% of the global population, are set to represent the main locus of extreme poverty worldwide.Cet article fournit une évaluation préliminaire de l'impact de la COVID-19 sur la pauvreté dans le monde, à la lumière des prévisions de croissance du FMI. Il montre que la pandémie va éroder bon nombre des progrès réalisés au cours de la dernière décennie en termes de réduction de la pauvreté. Notre marqueur de référence suggère qu'à l'échelle mondiale, le nombre de personnes vivant avec moins de 1,90 USD par jour va augmenter, avec 68 millions de personnes supplémentaires rien qu'en 2020. Cependant, ce nombre pourrait atteindre les 100 millions, si la récession s'avérait plus sévère qu’on ne l’avait initialement prédit, comme le craignent de nombreux spécialistes. Sans un soutien international efficace, ce recul constituera une menace importante pour la réalisation du Programme de développement durable à l'horizon 2030 des Nations Unies. Les retombées de la pandémie aggraveront également la concentration géographique de la pauvreté, au point que les pays les moins avancés, qui ne représentent que 14% de la population mondiale, risquent de représenter le principal foyer d’extrême pauvreté dans le monde.

Entrepreneurial ventures potentially offer a way out for farmers facing stagnant livelihoods in drought-ridden farming. We develop a model where entrepreneurial success of marginal farmers is linked to their ability to overcome the challenges posed by the existent socio-economic and environmental inequalities. Farmers with lower socio-economic status receive an unequal share of irrigation water from common reservoirs, which impedes their ability to accumulate financial capital and start an enterprise. Findings suggest that less endowed farmers could end up inefficiently dedicating resources towards reducing social inequality through a process of social friction, which adversely affects their livelihood prospects. When both farming and entrepreneurial ventures are prone to failure, farmers may stay within farming for longer despite higher failure risk. When agricultural exit risk is higher and enterprise failure risk lower, farmers are forced to invest more time in farming and mitigating such risks, which, in turn, delays their success in business.

An expanding evidence base suggests that children experiencing monetary and multidimensional poverty are not the same. This article breaks new ground by providing a unique mixed methods investigation of drivers of child poverty mismatch in Ethiopia and Vietnam, considering the role of measurement error and individualistic and structural factors. The analysis capitalises on large-scale secondary quantitative panel data and combines this with purposively collected primary qualitative data in both countries. It finds that factors at the household and structural level can mediate the effects of monetary poverty in terms of multidimensional poverty and vice versa, but that the size and sign of these effects are specific to place and time. The policy mix aiming to reduce all forms of child poverty need to be targeted on the basis of a multidimensional assessment of poverty and reflect the complex and context-specific interactions between determinants of child poverty.

In India, herbicide use has almost tripled in the decade from 2005/2006 to 2015/2016, while cultivated land did not change over that period. This is a striking case of input intensification, driven by rapidly rising rural wages, combined with soaring domestic production of herbicides, and modestly declining herbicide prices. Rural wages are rising, in part due to the rapid growth of rural nonfarm employment, and the tightening opportunity costs of time for rural Indians to manually weed their farms. To explore the household-level determinants and effects of herbicide adoption, we used a unique primary survey dataset of 2418 farm households collected by the authors in 2009 in the more commercialized regions (mainly growing cereals and pulses) over the east, center, and west of each of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Madhya Pradesh (MP), and Andhra Pradesh (AP). These three states range from north to south, and include 330 million people. The survey’s descriptive analysis showed that herbicide diffusion is well advanced, covering one third of farmers in UP and AP, and two-thirds in MP. The share had jumped 1.5, 1.2, and 2.7 times over just five years in the three states (UP, MP, and AP, respectively). The diffusion was broader and faster in the more dynamic regions of the states – in cereals and horticulture compared with legumes – and in larger farms in UP and MP (but in smaller farms in the irrigated rice area of AP). The regression analysis of adoption showed that as the rural nonfarm employment increases, the probability of adoption of herbicides increases very significantly. Herbicide use boosts land and labor yields by about 10%, and reduces labor use by approximately 5–10%. Agricultural research should be oriented toward herbicide formulations, which makes them adaptable to evolution of weed and agroclimatic conditions, and as affordable and as safe as possible for workers and the land.

Two major shocks in global supply systems have driven a rapid recent surge in herbicide adoption in the developing world. A flood of off-patent herbicide formulations has hit global markets at the same time that emerging low-cost Asian suppliers have mastered herbicide production technologies, scaled up productive capacity, and significantly lowered production costs. Together, they have increased availability and driven down herbicide costs in farming communities across the developing world. In settings where rural wage rates face upwards pressure, from non-farm and urban employment alternatives, herbicide adoption has responded rapidly. The years since 2005, in particular, have witnessed a sharp spurt in herbicide adoption in countries as diverse as China and Ethiopia. The six case studies reported in this special issue – the USA, EU, China, India, Ethiopia, and Mali – examine the differences in timing, key drivers, and consequences of herbicide adoption across this broad range of global settings.

Empirical studies that analyze the gender gap in livestock ownership are scarce. This paper investigates gender differences in livestock holding using five waves of survey data (1998-2010) from Northern Ethiopia. By employing decomposition analysis, we find that female-headed households (FHHs) own significantly fewer livestock compared to male-headed households (MHHs). Differences in observed characteristics and returns to characteristics account for 29 and 51 percent of the gender difference, respectively. Lower endowment of land area, male labor and children (aged 6 to 14) in FHHs are the observed factors causing the disparity. Gender difference is more pronounced in the ownership of large animals than in the ownership of small animals. Findings are relevant for gender-sensitive public interventions that aim to promote livestock accumulation.

For developing countries seeking to promote the automotive industry, it has been essential to attract foreign investment, and the terms under which this takes place are key determinants of the resulting development impact. This article examines the development of the sector in South Africa (SA) and Thailand. Both industries have been driven by growing domestic demand, government support and rapid international integration, but the Thai industry has grown at a significantly faster pace. The article demonstrates that the Thai automotive industry has major firm-level cost and market advantages. The combination of a favourable location, supportive trade and industrial policy and supply-side strengths has led to large-scale investment and Thailand’s development as a major regional hub. Foreign investment in SA on the other hand has been at a lower level, aimed primarily at accessing the domestic market. The consequence has been more limited development of the automotive cluster.

At the heart of the debate about the middle-income strata has been the question: How accurate are traditional measures of the knowledge of middle-income segments and their distribution between and within countries? The article analyses the recent shifts in the World Bank’s Country Income Classification, which rests on income thresholds. It also explores the implications of those changes for the way the emergence of the middle strata is conceived at international, regional and national levels. To that end, a particular emphasis is given to the Latin American region. The aim is to raise awareness on widespread shortcomings and drawbacks regarding the composition of the world development taxonomy and the conventional notion of the middle-income strata.

The collapse of state ownership, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, launched a new era of self-employment and small businesses in need of financing services throughout the region. This research investigates whether the traditional microfinance lending paradigm that adopts a two-pronged mission of financial sustainability and poverty outreach applies to young commercialized microfinance institutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The analysis employs a residual standard error approach to ordinary least squares and 2-stage least squares estimation, as well as recursive model estimation. The results suggest that financial sustainability can be adversely affected when interest rates exceed a threshold of 80 per cent and an individualized instead of group lending approach is adopted. However, poverty outreach is improved by servicing small loans to more borrowers, particularly women.

This article investigates the effects of earnings and capital positions on loan-loss provisioning behaviour of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and whether such provisioning is pro-cyclical. The analysis is based on a global panel database of 1294 MFIs in 103 countries over the period of 1996–2013. Results of static and dynamic model estimations confirm the validity of the income-smoothing hypothesis as earnings positively and significantly affect MFIs’ provisioning behaviour. This indicates increased provisioning during times of making profits than in times of incurring loss. As expected, the study also finds that the impact of business cycle on provisioning is pro-cyclical with some regional variations. However, the study fails to confirm that MFIs’ capital management situation significantly impacts their loan-loss provisioning.

This article explores the spatial disparity and convergence of education in Morocco. We identify the type of autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the Moroccan education system, and test whether its performance converges due to one of these factors. Three types of education indicators (quantity, quality and inequality) are used in the study. Using multi-dimensional analysis, we build a summary indicator that provides us with an overview of the system. Our sample includes 61 Moroccan provinces, studied between 1994 and 2004. Using spatial econometric techniques, our results show that whichever the indicator used there is strong spatial disparity in education in Morocco. The results confirm the validity of the centre–periphery model used in the education sector. The results also confirm the hypothesis of β-convergence of the performance of the Moroccan education system. Consequently, the need for policies to reduce the unfair inequalities between different areas is apparent.

Existing classifications of developing countries have been based on – or dominated by – income per capita. Even those deemed to be ‘alternatives’ to the income classification include income per capita as a main component. This article proposes an alternative approach to classifying countries based on cluster analysis that allows us to identify the key development characteristics of each cluster of countries. We build five clusters of developing countries and consider changes over time since the late 1990s. We find that there is neither a simple ‘linear representation of development levels’ (from low- to high- development countries) nor a ‘linear dynamic of development’ (as if groups were ‘immutable’ and countries were just trying to accommodate themselves to the ‘established’ groups), which implies that the dominant international classification needs review. Instead our multidimensional and dynamic taxonomy offers a more nuanced understanding of the diversity of challenges of developing countries and their evolution over time.

This study attempts to estimate credit fungibility (CF) and analyses its factors, using the primary data of 208 smallholders from Punjab province of Pakistan. Findings revealed that smallholders used a significant proportion of obtained credit on non-agricultural purposes. Among three groups of smallholders compared, that is, lower smallholders (⩽1.0 acre), middle smallholders (1.01–2.50 acres) and upper smallholders (2.51–5.00 acres), lower smallholders used nearly one-third of their obtained credit for non-agricultural purposes in spite of their highest dependency on credit to carry out their agricultural activities. In contrast, the other two groups of smallholders, whose dependency on credit was relatively low, had used a comparatively lower proportion of the credit for non-agricultural activities. The study also found that non-fixed assets and landholding size are the key factors of CF. Other factors such as non-farm income, household size, repayments of old loans, illiteracy and credit source also affected CF significantly, but with notable variations across the groups.

Due to an unfortunate oversight during the correction process the new affiliation of Chandika Gunasinghe has not been included. It should be read: Department of Economics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ruhuna, MH 81,000, Matara, Sri Lanka.

Where investments in agricultural research do not yield positive impact on incomes and food security, organizational and institutional bottlenecks can be critical factors. We illustrate this point by using the cases of Ghana and Nigeria, two of the largest agricultural research systems in sub-Saharan Africa. This article combines elements of organizational design, institutional analysis and innovation systems literature to empirically measure organizational performance and its determinants. Findings suggest weak monitoring and impact-orientation in sample research organizations. Unstable funds, weak infrastructure and unconducive work environment are binding constraints in increasing research productivity and outreach in Ghana and Nigeria. Different priorities for these two countries emerged from this article: quality of human resources seems to be the priority for Ghana, while adequacy of physical resources and implementation of organizational management systems seem to be the priority for Nigeria.

Myanmar has experienced growing labour outmigration and remittances during the past decade. Using data from a 2009/2010 nationwide household survey, this article examines how these remittances have impacted economic security and poverty in Myanmar. Findings suggest that while remittances help increase income and consumption directly, their impact on broader economic security turns out to be insignificant when other relevant household factors are controlled. In fact, remittance is linked to significantly lower food and total consumption expenditures, and greater incidence and degrees of poverty, resulting perhaps from the relatively small sizes of remittance from neighbouring Thailand. These and other findings have important policy implications for Myanmar’s attempt at broad-based socioeconomic development and deepening of international integration.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was launched in India in 2006, and a widespread view is emerging that though flawed the NREGA has been successful in providing employment to the poorest. There was wide agreement among scholars before 2006 that India would not be able to promote such a regime of rules-based welfare and that schemes providing targeted patronage, open to political and bureaucratic manipulation and clientelism, would continue to be the norm. This article confirms that the NREGA was indeed a paradox and constructs a number of hypotheses using a political economy framework to explain it.

This article discusses the transformation of development practice following market reforms in developing countries through a study in Gujarat, western India. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork on market-driven development in India’s flagship state of neo-liberal reforms, and the delivery of state-sponsored microcredit through the intervention. The rise of profit-maximizing priorities in government-owned rural banks, the state’s deployment of contracting and subcontracting to implement development policy, and the devolution of implementation to elected local bodies are discussed. This led to the responsibility for local development being tacitly shifted to an ungoverned space in the locality. These practices reveal marketization, decentralization and informalization to be crucial features of the post-liberalization state.

Micro and small enterprises in developing countries rarely upgrade and grow. The reasons are disputed. Recently, the ‘Doing Business’ reports strongly influenced the policy agenda, attributing small enterprise stagnation mainly to excessive bureaucracy and over-regulation. They claim a strong causal relationship running from regulatory reform and formalisation to business performance and overall economic growth and advocate reforms to reduce the complexity and cost of regulation. Our findings from research in the Philippines, India and Egypt challenge this view. Bureaucratic hurdles are of secondary importance. Entrepreneurs who want to formalise are usually able to do so. Formalisation usually comes after a firm has upgraded, i.e. when the entrepreneur perceives that the advantages of formalisation outweigh its disadvantages. Success in upgrading is strongly related to entrepreneurial attitudes and skills: know-how, proactive search for market opportunities, risk-taking attitude and creativity in dealing with financial constraints and deficits in the rule of law.

Despite very rapid growth, absolute poverty levels and unemployment in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a whole have remained high. This situation can be associated with SSA’s high dependence on imported technologies from advanced economies, many of which are unsuited to African factor endowments. This trend is, however, being reversed; advanced countries are becoming less important as sources of technology for SSA economies while other developing countries, particularly China, are becoming more important sources. This article assesses whether technologies from China and Africa’s indigenous capital goods sector may help address the development impasse. Drawing on a detailed research on Kenya’s formal and informal furniture sectors, the article compares the operating characteristics of Chinese machines, advanced country machines and the locally manufactured machines. The findings indicate that Chinese and Kenyan technologies appear more amenable for pro-poor industrialisation and development of SSA economies than do those from advanced countries.

Over the last two decades Tanzania’s economic growth has been disproportionately biased towards industry and services, denying farmers the distributional benefits that accompany progress. Rectifying the situation requires appropriate tillage tools to raise agricultural productivity. Past attempts to either identify local tools or import technologies from advanced countries yielded limited benefits. Coincidentally, China and India have recently been developing power tillers suitable for their own production environment. Because these emerging economies are themselves developing, we hypothesize that the technologies they generate could benefit other developing countries. This article compares emerging economy power tillers with advanced country power tillers on 95 rice farms in Tanzania. Despite their adverse environmental impact, we conclude that emerging economy power tillers are more beneficial to the poor than are advanced country tillers as they provide a low acquisition cost point of entry for cash constrained producers and are more employment-intensive, and in some cases more economically profitable.

This article discusses the trajectory of policy coherence for development (PCD) in the European Union (EU). In particular, it argues that the strong focus on institutional mechanisms, conceived as a way of overcoming different types of resistance, has had the effect that results achieved have by no means been commensurate with the expectations raised by the various reforms launched over the years. EU Member States have paid lip service to the importance of PCD without translating commitments into more coherent (national and supranational) policies. Moroever, an analysis of the Impact Assessment (IA) – one of the key mechanisms to promote PCD at EU level – prepared for the reform of the EU’s agricultural and fisheries policies in 2011–2013 shows how bureaucratic arrangements have substantially failed to clarify the real impact of EU policies on (different types of) developing countries. The conclusion is that successful promotion of PCD is more than just having the right arguments and ensuring sufficient technical support, but is first and foremost a political undertaking.

Despite its relatively short history, policy coherence for development (PCD) has become a major theme on the global development agenda, notably in connection with the post-2015 development agenda. There is an emerging literature on PCD, which, however, has not yet examined PCD as an element of transformative development, or changes in power relations and structures that sustain poverty and inequality. This introduction proposes a normative approach to PCD, informing the articles in this special issue. The approach calls for the examination of institutional and ideational power structures with the aim to contribute to PCD as an element of transformative development. The introduction is structured along the following themes: What is policy coherence, which policy coherence, and how to theorise policy coherence. Finally, a short history of PCD will be given.

In recent years policy coherence for development (PCD) has become a key principle in international development debates, and it is likely to become even more relevant in the discussions on the post-2015 sustainable development goals. This article addresses the rise of PCD on the Western donors’ aid agendas. Although the concept had already appeared in the work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the early 1990s, it was not until 2007 that PCD became one of the Organisation’s key priorities. We adopt a complexity-sensitive perspective, involving a process-tracing analysis and a multi-causal explanatory framework. We argue that the rise of PCD is not as contingent as it looks. While actors such as the EU, the DAC and the OECD Secretariat were the ‘active causes’ of the rise of PCD, it is equally important to look at the underlying ‘constitutive causes’ that enabled policy coherence to thrive.

Since the early 2000s, increasing attention has been given to the migration–development nexus. Numerous studies, policy analyses and recommendations on how to make migration work for development in practical ways have been produced, resulting in (among other initiatives) attempts to include migration concerns in the post-2015 development agenda and efforts to promote policy coherence for development. After an initial ‘euphoria’, most involved parties today agree that there is no simple one-way relationship between migration and development. Development is unlikely to decrease migration in the short run, and migration in itself cannot be the main recipe for development. Critical voices, moreover, argue that much migration-development policy in reality has served migration management functions rather than development goals. This article reflects on these contradictions in the light of Danish policy debate and practice. It brings considerations on the migration–development nexus in dialogue with reflections on policy coherence and forwards the following two arguments: First, that although policy coherence in the migration-development field perhaps always was unrealistic, a certain degree of policy incoherence might – at least for a while – have safeguarded development budgets from being used for migration-management purposes. Second, that reluctance to incorporate migration concerns in ‘classic’ development activities represents a missed opportunity. This calls for a critical analysis of Danish and European pledges to adopt a comprehensive and coherent approach to the field of development and migration policies.

With the 21 targets of the Millennium Development Goals and the 0.7 per cent of gross national income target for Official Development Assistance coming to an end, 2015 represents an opportunity to update and broaden the global development reporting framework to strengthen the global effort to reduce poverty in developing countries. This article proposes a three-pillar approach to monitor the post-2015 progress based on traditional development outcomes, policy coherence for development indicators and global public goods. Through an analytical framework, the desirability, feasibility and political acceptability of the approach are assessed. The article finds that any perceived technical challenges could be overcome but that the willingness of more affluent countries to have their contributions monitored is likely to be the key stumbling block.