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A database of journal articles and conference papers that cover the economics of agricultural development in Africa during the period 2016–2020 was compiled. These papers are first described in terms of demographic and bibliometric criteria, followed by a network analysis of the main centers of origin and of influence of this research. Finally, three different processes were used to test the policy relevance of the work. These include a simple enumeration of the policy recommendations in a sample of the papers, a megatrend analysis, and a comparison of their focus with the standard narrative of the role of agriculture in economic development. The results show that a large proportion of the literature is not forward‐looking, and is weak on policy relevance. We ignore a number of issues that engage the attention of those concerned with implementing structural change in agriculture across the many very different but very real natural resource, political, social, economic, and technological environments around the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of foreign aid in stimulating economic development is a topic of intense debate in the scientific community and among policy analysts. Numerous empirical studies are devoted to investigating the impact of foreign aid on the economic growth/development of recipient countries. This study reviews the literature relevant to this debate using the bibliometric data of scholarly papers in the Scopus database. Our intention is to identify the trends of publications, their geographical distribution and the most influential journals, authors and articles in this field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, eco-efficiency – ‘sustainable development at the company level’ or ‘value added per environmental impact’ – is operationalized at the production unit level. An eco-efficiency index is developed and tested with 31 Finnish and 37 Swedish pulp, paper and board mills in 1993–1996. In essence, gross value added without a change in inventories is divided by environmental impact aggregated with seven valuation methods. The definition of eco-efficiency as sustainable development at the company level appears to be problematic. [Eco]2-efficiency does not include the third, ethical dimension sustainable development, but only ecology and economy. Value added is a limited indicator of economic performance and very sensitive to changes in market prices, while environmental impact changes with valuation assumptions. The Swedish mills were generally more eco-efficient, while the Finnish mills were more eco-efficient in integrated woodfree paper, solid bleached sulphate board and liquid packaging board. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Most aspects of the argument of the UK government's 2000 White Paper on globalization and development stand up reasonably well to the findings of subsequent research. But there is significant new evidence in two areas: the size of the contribution of institutions to growth; and the complexity of the effects of increased openness on poor people. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion of E. M. Bernstein's paper about the financial problems of economic development. Bernstein discusses five facets of this problem: to decrease the size of the development program, to energize the inflow of foreign capital, to encourage domestic savings, to gather together the available resources, and to allocate the resources available to the private sector in a way that will stimulate the greatest increase in production. The author believes that this analysis leaves no room for argument.

NGOs have, by and large, given a warm welcome to the new UK White Paper on International Development. But, after 20 years of political marginalization, is the development community too easily satisfied? This article argues that the White Paper does mark a welcome break from the previous Conservative approach with a number of commendable policy ideas. The document overall, however, still contains important flaws, particularly in areas where the Treasury will have inevitably played a critical role. If DFID and the new Secretary of State can take credit for the best of the White Paper's contents then her Cabinet colleagues are the obvious culprits for the worst. This article argues that NGOs can play a constructive role by recognizing the weaknesses of the Paper and undertaking to help in building the public constituency for further, and more fundamental, change. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the implications of the strong poverty focus in the new White Paper for advancing gender equality. Recognizing that there are efficiency arguments in its focus on poor women and some dangers in too rigid a link being made between gender and poverty, it is argued that an equity and empowerment focus nevertheless inform the gender and poverty nexus. This does not necessarily imply that women's subordination is adequately dealt with. Making gender a cross-cutting issue in human rights goes some way towards escaping an anti-poverty approach to women. However, this does not automatically address gender relations and there are some contradictions even within the human rights focus itself. Beyond the principles of the White Paper, the real potential for promoting women's empowerment and advancing gender equity lies in its practice. The commitment to building partnerships needs to be extended to gender equitable partnerships which imply developing skills and new forms of practice among all partners to accommodate the participation of poor women, and recognising that accountability is a two-way street. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour government's new White Paper promises great changes in the British aid programme: re-focusing aid on poverty reduction, partnerships replacing one-sided conditionalities, and policy coherence so that the broad gamut of British policies in areas as diverse as agriculture, trade and investment are in line with the needs of international development. However, the Paper is stronger on broad policy statements than detail as to how to implement these strategies. Moreover, an examination of the history of British aid shows continuity to have been greater than change. Both Labour and Conservative governments have presided over cuts in UK aid, and so instead pointed to the high quality of British aid. But efforts to improve aid quality have been impeded by the use of aid to achieve political and commercial objectives. Whether the White Paper represents a break with the past cannot be determined by the Paper's brave rhetoric, but only by the future actions of the Department for International Development. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists several books including "Urban Economic Development," edited by Richard D. Bingham and John P. Blair, "Regulation by Municipal Licensing," J. Bossoms, S. M. Makuch and J. Palmer, and "Public Policy and Administrative Studies," volume 1, edited by O. P. Dwivedi.

This article offers a discursive analysis of the Conservative green paper for international development, published as part of the closely fought election campaign of 2010 that culminated in a UK coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. The article examines the paper in comparison with the discursive shifts represented by the first Department for International Development (DfID) white paper, published by the outgoing Labour administration in 1997. In contrast with the optimistic and globalist developmentalism that characterised Labour's development discourse, the green paper sounds a more cautious note, using empire to focus on Britain's leadership role in poverty alleviation rather than on global progress, and brings back the full force of developmentalism only at the point where it seeks to legitimate spending on security concerns as a development concern. The article then moves on to examine the green paper's most explicit discursive move, the signalling of a 'post-bureaucratic age'. This move towards increased information provision to promote transparency and accountability is likely to signal greater control by powerful donors in securitised times, albeit with a potential re-scaling of responsibility for poverty alleviation to the poorest local communities. Finally, the article looks briefly at information technologies in relation to the transnational spatiality of civil society, arguing that attention needs to be paid to the more embodied forms of transnational association encouraged by the green paper, and to the selection and impacts of information, which need to be seen in the discursive context of wider Conservative constructions of the 'big society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to propose a review of 85 empirical papers examining the relationships between insurance and economic development, that is, the insurance-growth nexus. When looking at the economic importance of the insurance sector, most papers in the past have looked at the demand side (the level of economic development is an explanatory variable among other factors that affect the demand for insurance). Because the role of the insurance sector and its contribution to development is at the agenda of international organizations and because the importance of the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been well recognized and emphasized in the field of economic development, more recent papers have examined the causality links between insurance and economic development and the role of insurance as a significant determinant in the process of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discursive analysis of Great Britain's Conservative Party 2011 Green Paper "One World Conservatism: A Conservative agenda for international development." It offers a comparison of the conception of development in that paper with the 1997 Labour Party White Paper which launched the development of the Department for International Development (DFID). The discourse used to describe Britain's role in promoting global development and reducing poverty is examined.

Books reviewed in this article: Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor – A White Paper on International Development. By the Secretary of State for International Development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the perspective of the Independent Group on British Aid (IGBA) 1997 White Paper on International Development. Measures for which the IGBA has been campaigning since the publication of "Real Aid: A Strategy for Britain," in 1982; Significance of the White Paper; Advice from the group regarding the White Paper on International Development.

The White Paper signals a clear, strong and comprehensive commitment by the British government to use its aid and influence to help poor people. It spells out a range of specific aims to benefit and empower the poor and especially women. It endorses a new powerful concept of partnership with its own commitments to partners and it specifies the implications of any lack of commitment by them to poverty reduction. Unfortunately there is no systematic exposition of the changes in policies required to achieve pro-poor growth; there are ambiguities about targeting and no lessons are drawn about what has worked well in its own past interventions. DFID appears to want to ‘go it alone’ with little indication of the collective efforts (including other donors) required to achieve these ambitious goals. Nevertheless, the agency has organizational strengths to achieve its new strategy which gives confidence that more precise operational strategies will be devised and pursued with conviction in the coming years. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the White Paper from the rural perspective. It notes that very little attention is paid in the text to natural resources spending. However the text does provide some indication of the direction in which rural development policy within DFID might evolve. In particular it can be expected that the scope of rural interventions will expand to embrace a more holistic concept of rural livelihoods. This has several implications which DFID must address in the near future if this important opportunity for reorientation is not to be lost. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1997 White Paper on international development is the first such policy statement since 1975. Comparison of the two thus gives us an opportunity for assessing how official thinking and politics in the UK have responded to the many changes that have occurred in the meantime. This article first compares the views of the two papers on the nature of development and of the poverty problem; and then compares the treatment of EC/EU issues. Neither Paper was just about aid. We conclude that WP75 appears comparatively narrow in focus and unsophisticated in its appreciation of the problems addressed, but is better at taking a strategic view and more forthcoming about specifics. What WP97 gains in the breadth and sophistication of its appreciation of problems it loses in detachment from reality and retreat from specifics. Its treatment of EU issues is surprisingly laconic. But overall WP97—in its various forms—is more accessible and decidedly more populist. It has already been disseminated to a far wider audience than WP75 ever reached. Its success is in simplifying a world which development officials know has grown more complex; its failing is that they seem unsure about specifically how their influence and modest resources can best be applied to improving it. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Government published a new White Paper on International Development in November 1997. The White Paper sets out the UK Government's vision and new policies for the elimination of international poverty; it explains the new objectives and strategy for the Department for International Development and details the new objective of ensuring that all UK Government policies take account of their impact on sustainable development. This article summarizes the content of the White Paper and discusses in detail some of the issues involved in operationalizing the policies. It looks particularly at the new proposals for partnership between UK Government and developing countries and explores some of the implications of policies to support pro-poor economic growth. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Republic of Panama has exposed 64,000 ha of lowland forest in the former Canal Zone to possible development. The forests form a 16-km-wide strip reaching 65 km from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean and function as the water supply for the canal and as home to one of the world's richest terrestrial biotas. We present an overview of the distribution of bird diversity in the forests of the canal area based on 10 years of inventories. A total of 498 terrestrial species has been recorded, of which 177 occur only in lowland forests. More species reside in Caribbean- than in Pacific-slope forests and in the largest forest tracts. The Panamanian government, recognizing the importance of the forests for protection of biodiversity and for proper functioning of the canal, has created two national parks and a national monument in the canal area. One large park, Soberania National Park, currently contains 92% of the region's forest-dwelling species. Two large tracts on the Caribbean coast, the Achiote Road forest and the Fort Sherman forest, are not designated as national parks but are recognized as important forest areas. Those two forests harbor species found nowhere else in the canal corridor. Extensive fragmentation, disconnection of forested corridors between foothills and lowlands, and anthropogenic degradation of forests near towns have altered regional bird-community dynamics. Some dynamics occur on large spatial scales, such as the poorly understood movements of elevational and transisthmian migrants. Long-term maintenance of bird species diversity in the canal area will require preservation of the large forest tracts and reestablishment of a forested connection from the canal corridor lowlands to the Chagres lowlands and foothills in the east. Such conservation activities will be challenging to execute given the region's growing human population and desires for a stronger national economy. We recommend protection of remaining forests and active enforcement of protection laws to reduce hunting and further intrusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]