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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.

Provides an overview of the research on the implementation of the new public management in developing countries. Purpose of the research; Modes of organizational reform; List of papers published in the research program.

The fifth‐generation (5G) technology is seen to be a solution for developing countries to improve their quality of services in terms of transportation, education, health, agriculture, and other fields, thereby holding the promises of economic transformation by improving productivity and the quality of life. The paper considers some of the challenges that face operators, investors, and providers when planning to introduce 5G technology to developing countries. The main focus of this paper is the 5G transport network, in particular, the backhaul network. The 5G transport network architectural options and scenarios are discussed based on several standards and previous studies, the problems of existing infrastructures of developing countries are investigated, and new proposed technologies that may help to address those challenges are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships between financial development (FD), economic complexity and country stability. To achieve this objective, this paper applies a finite mixture model to a sample of 92 developing countries over the period 1995–2018. The study posits that the effect of FD on economic complexity differs across groups of countries with similar but unobserved characteristics. The study finds that the effect of FD on economic complexity varies across four classes of countries, which differ according to their level of economic, political and financial stability. Furthermore, the study argues that stable countries are more likely to be in class 1, including more performing countries – that is, the group of countries where FD spurs economic complexity. This finding remains consistent even when alternative measures of FD and economic complexity are considered. Hence, efforts by developing countries to undertake sound reforms to reduce economic, political and financial risks could help leverage the benefits of FD in fostering the development of sophisticated and complex economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN General Assembly is the central forum of world politics. While it formally allows the member states to delegate up to five representatives, the size of the national delegations is generally larger and significantly increases over time. In this paper, I explore the size of the national delegations to the General Assembly from 1993 to 2016. Generally, the major powers (USA, Russia) send the biggest delegations. Surprisingly, China sends significantly smaller delegations than it used to before 2008. Big delegations are also sent by some small (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland) or developing countries (Nigeria, Bangladesh). My analysis shows that national capacities and issue‐specific motivations drive up the delegation size. Although the issue‐specific explanations are relatively rare in UN‐related research (due to the general‐purpose nature of the organisation), I argue that human rights, international security, economic development, and UN governance are the agendas for which states care about the General Assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is pivotal for sustainable economic growth. Undoubtedly, the role of the composition of the export basket (measured as economic complexity) is one of the crucial variables influencing energy consumption. Despite its importance, the existing body of literature does not intensively study the relationship between economic complexity and total energy consumption. Therefore, this study's primary aim was to examine the effect of economic complexity on energy consumption in a case study of 21 developed and 44 developing countries for the period 1971–2014. In this context, economic complexity expresses the level of sophistication of a country's export basket. This paper considers energy prices and income as explanatory variables in Durbin‐H panel cointegration analysis and applies a cointegration test with structural breaks to check for the long‐run relationships. For the long‐run estimations, we employ the augmented mean group method and dynamic seemingly unrelated regression. The findings reveal that economic complexity increases energy consumption in developing countries while it decreases energy consumption in developed countries. This is an important insight for countries concerned about their energy dependence. The diversification of their production and export baskets can reduce energy needs. The paper finally presents policy recommendations based on the empirical estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a paper by Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg and Tristan Reed that explores the role of market size in economic development and poverty reduction. The paper argues that market size is a significant constraint on development and that conventional development policies may not be fully effective. The authors present evidence that supports their perspective and propose measures of market size. However, the article also highlights the potential negative effects of international integration on domestic producers and raises questions about the strong version of the argument. It suggests that other factors, such as macro policies and commodity prices, may have contributed to the recent economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. The article concludes by discussing the changing global context and the need to focus on domestic demand for sustained economic development. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Alan Gelb et al which discusses the performance of different groups of countries with an emphasis on better-performing low-income countries and another by Ji Hong Kim which examines Korea's economic development.

The low‐carbon transition involves achieving the coordinated development between economic development and carbon reduction. This paper utilises an integrated decomposition and econometric framework to reveal the influence mechanism and convergence evolution of carbon emission intensity (CEI) across 29 OECD countries in the period 1992–2018. The country‐level low‐carbon transition efforts are then investigated. The results imply that: (1) The reduction in CEI is primarily attributed to the changes in economic development and energy intensity. The carbon emission coefficient effect also negatively influences CEI. The impact of energy consumption per capita, however, is negligible. (2) According to econometric analysis, energy intensity, energy mix, carbon emissions per capita and energy use per capita have positive impacts on CEI. Specially, GDP per capita shows an inverted U‐shaped curve relationship with CEI. (3) There is evidence of convergence in CEI across developed countries. Energy intensity plays a crucial role in accelerating the CEI convergence process, implying a half‐life of 3 years. (4) Fifteen European countries have made strong low‐carbon transition efforts among all countries. Denmark has made the largest efforts, South Korea the least. This study provides important implications for low‐carbon economy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperatives play important role in economic development via multiple channels, particularly, in developing countries' cases. Considering this fact, Nepal's constitution 2017 has incorporated the cooperative as one of the three pillars of her economy. This paper aims to analyze the role of cooperatives in the economic development of Nepal. For this, first, this paper documents the trend and pattern of Nepalese cooperatives' evolving structure, then moves to the econometric estimation to analyze the role of cooperatives in economic growth employing an advanced methodology. Looking at the properties of time series data for the period of 49 years from 1970 to 2018, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach of cointegration is employed. The major finding is that the development of the cooperatives has a long‐run relationship with economic growth. However, the focus should be seen as on the involvement of many people in the cooperatives' activities rather than just on amassing the cooperatives' capital. The results also suggest that there is a need for the attention of policymakers so ensure that share capital contributes to economic growth. Therefore, the areas of priorities and scope of work of cooperatives need to be reconsidered when formulating new policies related to cooperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair trade has never been more popular, with worldwide sales soaring. This editorial to the special issue of Sustainable Development on ‘Fair trade, business and sustainable development’ introduces the topic and papers within the special issue. It discusses the success of the ‘fairtrade’ brand and the impacts of fair trade schemes as well as the future of the brand. The paper concludes that this alternative trading system does work in practical terms and in helping marginalized producers in developing countries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to examine the threshold impact of financial development and trade liberalization on income inequality as a measure of sustainable development in a sample of developed and developing countries using panel threshold analysis. Two major dimensions of financial development are considered: liquid liabilities and stock market capitalization. The empirical results revealed that financial development reduces income inequality only in countries where their GDP per capita is above ~US$11,000. It has no significant impact in reducing inequality in developing countries. This implies that institutional reforms in less developed and developing countries are necessary in order to reap the gains from financial development. Trade liberalization is found to have a positive impact on income inequality for both country groups—that is, trade benefits have worsened the income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information regarding the problems faced by the developing countries in their course of development. The problems faced by the developing countries of the world are numerous and of critical importance. These problems include those of industrialization and economic development, of changing traditional social institutions such as stratification and power mechanisms so that they facilitate rather than inhibit modernization, and of providing ever-increasing percentages of citizens with an education that teaches the economic and social skills requisite to assuming rewarding roles in a changing society. However, in the array of social and behavioral sciences that have been brought to bear upon the problems of developing countries, social psychology has been noticeably absent. Anthropologists have carried over their interest in traditional societies to include concern with the problems these societies face in the processes of modernization and development, particularly as these processes affect values and institutions such as the family and religion.

This paper looks at corporate income taxes in developing countries from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective. Many economic principles about corporate income taxes apply equally in advanced and developing economies, but some characteristics of developing economies lead to different trade-offs. These include fewer locational rents and generally lower administrative capacity. Empirically, corporate income tax developments broadly resemble those in advanced economies, but there are important differences too, such as a greater reliance on tax incentives, reflected in a gradual narrowing - rather than broadening - of tax bases in combination with tax cuts. Detailed analysis using effective tax rates reveals various distortions including a preference for certain assets, and strong tax advantages of debt finance over equity finance, particularly in high-inflation environments. An empirical analysis of correlations between country-specific features and the likelihood of using tax incentives shows that countries offering low tax rates also tend to offer tax incentives, but that they cut their standard rates by substantially less than other countries between 1996 and 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is key to economic development, with varying implications and uneven impacts on origin and destination regions. This paper examines the variation in the major drivers of migration within and across continental blocs and the OECD in a gravity framework. The empirical model uses bilateral migration flow data for 182 countries over a 25 year period (1990–2015) while controlling for push and pull drivers of migration. The novelty of the study rests in the added dimension of the variation in the impact of migration drivers that is based on the direction of migration flow. The results suggest that migration drivers vary significantly across several economic blocs based in different regions and OECD countries. We find that the weight and significance of the impact of migration drivers vary significantly based on the direction of flow across continental blocs and the OECD, although some similarities exist in some regions regardless of the direction of migration flow. The results specifically show that economic and socio‐cultural drivers of migration are strongest when migration originates in continents dominated by developing countries and terminates in other continents, compared to migration that originates and terminates within the continents. This raises some anomalies and several issues of potential policy intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between gender inequality and economic growth is a topic that is of growing interest, both in the academic literature and the policy arena. In this paper, we survey the literature that analyses this relationship from a macroeconomic perspective. We argue that that the existing theories provide a wide range of mechanisms through which these two variables may affect each other but also that more work needs to be carried out to obtain quantitative predictions out of these models. In the empirical arena, we note the lack of connection between most studies and the existing theories described earlier. In both cases, we propose approaches to alleviate these problems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between foreign aid and economic growth has been the subject of much controversy. A recent theme suggesting that aid promotes growth, but only in a good policy environment has ratchet up that debate. In this paper, we assess the importance of policy and aid in generating growth when the aid, policy, and growth relationship is nonlinear. This allows us to examine the varying effects of aid and policy in different data segments, which we do without imposing any particular structure on the underlying relationship. We find that policy is an important determinant of growth. We also find partial corroboration of the view that aid is growth enhancing in a good policy environment, and some evidence of diminishing returns to aid. These findings suggest that nonlinearities if not appropriately addressed fail to capture the detailed underlying dynamics and thereby mask some key features of the aid-policy-growth relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the factors which promote entrepreneurial activity across a number of transition, developing and developed countries. It produces results which highlight the importance of institutions in promoting entrepreneurial activity. This work is part of an on-going research project on the relationship between the legal system and factors which influence economic development. In particular, it has been shown that legal rules protecting creditors and investors influence the size of financial markets which in turn influence economic development. Our paper thus extends the analysis of the impact of institutions beyond that previously established to demonstrate its influence on another driver of economic development. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the challenges of measuring the labor income share of developing countries. The poor availability and reliability of national account data as well as the fact that self‐employed—whose labor income is hard to capture—account for a major share of the workforce and often work in the informal sector render its computation difficult. Consequently, measuring the labor share requires assumptions. I consult social accounting matrices in addition to national account data to gain information on the production structure and self‐employed incomes in developing countries. The final data set covers about 90 developing countries from 1990 to 2011. The data suggest that the finding of declining labor shares of previous studies also applies to the sample of low and middle‐income countries. Furthermore, I find the labor share in developing countries to be about one‐half in size and hence less than the standard "two‐thirds" in economic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of economic growth in developing countries within the standard growth regression framework, with special attention being paid to the experience of landlocked developing countries ( LLDCs). The results confirm that the landlockedness hampers economic growth, but the magnitude of negative impact is sensitive to alternative estimation methods. However, the analysis suggests that good governance, trade openness and coordinating infrastructure development with neighbours explain the significant aspect of the inter-country differences in growth rates among LLDCs. The results also suggest that African landlocked countries are not different from the other LLDCs. Contrary to the 'resource curse' hypothesis, natural resources seem to contribute to economic growth of LLDCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique hand‐collected dataset of 1,251 European Union banks and 20,850 foreign affiliates hosted in 154 countries, this paper investigates how both host country and home country regulations affect the decision on where and how to go abroad in developing countries as opposed to developed countries. We find that banks prefer high‐income countries with numerous activity restrictions and weaker supervision but less developed countries with less restrictions and stronger supervision. In all cases, they avoid locations with stronger capital regulation than at home. Regarding the choice of foreign organizational form (branches versus subsidiaries), banks rather operate subsidiaries in both high and middle‐income countries with stringent entry requirements but prefer branches in developing countries with stringent capital requirements and greater supervisory power. Our findings contribute to the literature examining bank internationalization and have several policy implications for regulatory reforms in developing and developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses factors that can facilitate property rights institutions reform in developing countries ( DC). Inspired by the works of North and Weingast ( Journal of Economic History, 49, 1989, 803) and Acemoglu et al. ( American Economic Review, 95, 2005a, 546; 2008) relating to the process of institutional reforms in England during the seventeenth century, I assume that FDI inflows could contribute to property rights reform in DC that are initially endowed with a minimum of effective institutions of constraints on the executive (i.e. effective institutions of checks and balances). Using five-year panel data over the period 1970-2005 with a sample of 80 DC, and after correcting for endogeneity, I find that conditioned on the initial level of constraints on the executive, the effect of FDI inflows on the probability of reforming property rights is positive and significant. The minimum level of constraints on the executive necessary for the catalytic role of FDI inflows in reforming property rights institutions is 3.6. Only 20 out of the 80 DC in the sample have this minimum level of constraints on the executive. Among the 20 countries five are in sub- Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate change arena comprises a diverse set of interacting actors from international, national and local levels. The multilevel architecture has implications for low-carbon technology deployment in developing countries, an issue salient to both development and climate objectives. The paper examines this theme through two inter-related questions: how do (or don't) low-carbon technologies get deployed in India's built environment, and what implications can be drawn from the Indian case for effective low-carbon technology development and transfer for developing countries? By examining the multilevel linkages in India's buildings sector, the paper shows how the interactions between governance levels can both support and hinder technology deployment, ultimately leading to inadequate outcomes. The potential of these linkages is hobbled by aspects of the national context (federated energy governance and developing-country capacity limitations), yet can also be enabled by other features (the climate policy context, which may motivate international actors to fill domestic capacity lacunae). Reflecting on the India case, the paper makes recommendations for improved low-carbon technology deployment in developing countries: (1) technology development and transfer collaboration on a 'need-driven' approach, (2) development of the specific types of capacity required across the entire innovation chain and (3) domestic strengthening of the coordination and agendas across and between governance levels. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a general equilibrium model of a developing economy with a capital intensive formal sector and a large informal sector with sector-specific capital to analyse the effects of investments on the sectoral returns to capital, sectoral wage rates, and composition of output and employment. Beginning with capital market disequilibrium (unequal sectoral rates of return) and labour market distortion (formal-informal wage gap), the model traces the evolution of the economy till capital market equilibrium is attained. The investments in the formal sector equalise the wages (a 'turning point' in growth à la Lewis) and reduces the size of the informal sector. The sectoral rates of returns equalise only if there is no factor intensity reversal, otherwise the economy specialises in the production of formal goods. The investments in the informal sector equalise the rates of return, do not affect the size of the formal sector and finally, a formal-informal wage gap persists provided factor intensities are not reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the emergence of remittances studies, knowledge about their effect on economic development is still ambiguous. This paper investigates the impact of remittances at macroeconomic level in developing countries controlling for endogeneity problems with the use of panel vector autoregression (panel VAR). The findings suggest that remittances have a positive, albeit small, impact on economic growth even without considering the role of institutions. When institutions are included, the pattern of response remains unaltered. A distinction between low versus high remittances participation in economic activity evidences that, although the impact of remittances on growth is similar, appreciation of the exchange rate occurs in economies with high remittances participation. Finally, a distinction by geographical region reveals that Eastern European economies receive the greatest benefit from these flows, followed by the Americas and Asia; however, African economic growth does not appear to have a statistically significant impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper bridges two related, but up to now, unconnected literatures: economic growth stability and population-economic growth. The paper differs from previous population-economic growth analyses by focusing on instability of economic growth in developing countries. This study contributes to a previous paper on the developing country growth collapse by adding important demographic variables. The paper provides an explanation for 'new' negative correlations of population and economic growth: because 1960s were a relatively smooth time for economic growth, youth dependency did not seem important; however, during turbulent 1970s and 1980s, countries with falling dependency burdens weathered economic shocks better. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No empirical evidence has yet emerged for the existence of a robust positive relationship between financial openness and economic growth. This paper argues that a key reason for the elusive evidence is the presence of a time-varying relationship between openness and growth: countries tend to gain in the short term, immediately following capital account liberalization, but may not grow faster or even experience temporary growth reversals in the medium to long term. The paper finds substantial empirical evidence for the existence of such an intertemporal tradeoff for 45 industrialized and emerging market economies. The acceleration of growth immediately after liberalization is found to be often driven by an investment boom and a surge in portfolio and debt inflows. By contrast, the quality of domestic institutions, the size of FDI inflows and the sequencing of the liberalization process are found to be important driving forces for growth in the medium to longer term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the practical approach to sustainable development in Bhutan and specifically on public views on and experiences with the implementation of this strategy. Bhutan's development goal is ‘gross national happiness’. The strategy it has adopted to achieve this goal is known as the ‘middle path strategy’, which essentially addresses four sources (‘pillars’) of gross national happiness: economic development, ecological preservation, cultural preservation and good governance, without giving greater emphasis to any one pillar over the others. The paper is based on a survey conducted in 10 districts of Bhutan. Standard pre-designed questionnaires were used for interviews with representatives of three main groups in society: the state, civil society and the market. The results of this survey, the first of its kind to be carried out in the country, revealed that there is general agreement with the substance of the development strategy, although not everyone is fully aware of its scope and implications. A remarkable outcome of the survey, and one that contrasts with happiness studies conducted elsewhere in the world, was the high score for happiness in a country whose gross domestic product is so small. However, people do feel uncertain and the chosen development path is still fragile. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causal relationship between FDI and economic growth by using an innovative econometric methodology to study the direction of causality between the two variables. We apply our methodology, based on the Toda-Yamamoto test for causality, to time-series data covering the period 1969–2000 for three developing countries, namely Chile, Malaysia and Thailand, all of them major recipients of FDI with a different history of macroeconomic episodes, policy regimes and growth patterns. Our empirical findings clearly suggest that it is GDP that causes FDI in the case of Chile and not vice versa, while for both Malaysia and Thailand, there is a strong evidence of a bi-directional causality between the two variables. The robustness of the above findings is confirmed by the use of a bootstrap test employed to test the validity of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the effects of the impact of financial globalization on economic growth, examining its interaction with financial instability for a sample of 72 developing countries over the period 1972–2011, using dynamic panel estimator 'two‐step Generalized Method of Moments' (two‐step system GMM). The main results of the paper are the following: (i) financial instability and indebtedness‐globalization decrease growth; (ii) financial globalization and investment‐globalization increase growth; (iii) indebtedness‐globalization increases the effect of financial instability on growth; (iv) investment‐globalization decreases the effect of financial instability on growth; and (vi) financial globalization decreases the effect of financial instability on growth. These results are robust in a set of tests consisting of the insertion of alternative variables of financial instability, the inclusion of new control variables, inter alia an indicator of banking crises, using different time periods, and changing of the composition of the sample. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets up a vertically related market model in which imitation and innovation are endogenously determined to study the impact of intellectual property rights ( IPR) protection on less-developed countries. It shows how a less-developed country switches from imitation to innovation as it develops. It is also found that the relationship between IPR protection and economic development is U-shaped. The IPR protection tends to go down and then go up as income rises. This finding also conforms with that in the empirical literature on IPR protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional quality is often emphasised as an engine of economic development in developing countries. However, most of the literature assumes that institutions are exogenous. In this paper, we adopt the opposite view, and study the way the design of the monetary regime, and specifically the adoption of an inflation targeting regime, can impact the quality of institutions. Using the propensity scores matching method, which allows controlling for self‐selection in policy adoption, along with a wide set of robustness checks, including GMM‐based estimations and controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, we find that the adoption of inflation targeting significantly improves the quality of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of new firms is an important determinant of regional economic development and agglomeration is a key factor affecting the formation and scale of operations of new firms. The present paper is among the first to explore the relationship between agglomeration economies (using localization and urbanization economies) and new firms' formation and scale of operations in a developing country. We make use of rich firm‐level data and find that agglomeration has a significant impact on the formation of new firms and their scale of operation in Punjab, Pakistan. Our findings also reveal that localization at all scales (small, medium and large) has a positive correlation with the arrival of new firms, while medium‐scale and large‐scale localization is positively correlated with the scale of operation of new firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undernutrition among women and children contributes to almost half the global burden of child mortality in developing countries. The impact of nutrition on economic development has highlighted the need for evidence-based solutions and yielded substantial global momentum. However, it is now recognized that the impact of evidence-based interventions is limited by the lack of evidence on the best operational strategies for scaling up nutrition interventions. With the goal of encouraging greater engagement in implementation research in nutrition and generating evidence on implementation and utilization of nutrition interventions, this paper brings together a framework and a broad analysis of literature to frame and highlight the crucial importance of research on the delivery and utilization of nutrition interventions. The paper draws on the deliberations of a high-level working group, an e-consultation, a conference, and the published literature. It proposes a framework and areas of research that have been quite neglected, and yet are critical to better understanding through careful research to enable better translation of global and national political momentum for nutrition into public health impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on designing alternative economic development indices by measuring economic progress in the face of the discontinuity of globalisation. To this end, we use different evaluation criteria for the 'old' (1960–1990) and the 'new' (1990–2019) globalisation. First, the historical context that has shaped the contemporary globalisation processes is outlined, which makes it possible to identify the 1990s and the subsequent change in the structure of the world industrial production and the world GDP as the most important tipping point. Based on the observation that none of the existing indices sufficiently cover all the issues, a new pilot measure of economic progress is proposed, which takes into account two time periods: the old (1960–1990) and the new (1990–2019) globalisation. The analysis of the data sample of 18 countries (G6, I6 and selected LDCs) using this measure makes it possible to assign their economies to four categories, depending on the results they have achieved; the 'winners', the 'losers', the 'late‐bloomers' and the 'inmates of industry'. Furthermore, possible directions for the future research on the subject are indicated. The data set supporting this study has been made publicly available to help in its continuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to provide empirical evidence to determine whether microfinance, measured through a country's gross loan portfolio per capita, has a heterogeneous effect on poverty reduction among countries with different levels of poverty. We have used a panel‐data quantile regression with a data set for 57 countries for the years 2005, 2008, and 2011 to estimate the distributional impacts of microcredits on two poverty indices. Results reveal not only that microfinance significantly reduces the incidence and depth of poverty, but also that this effect differs across the different poverty levels (quantiles). The effect of microcredit on poverty reduction is slightly larger among countries where the incidence and depth of poverty are the highest, suggesting that microcredit reaches and benefits even the poorest individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developing world has experienced unprecedented effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic. The devastating effects of this major crisis are felt in all possible spheres of the developing world and with a serious impact on social and economic development in developing countries. The spread of Covid‐19, which has brought the world to a near standstill, has given rise to the question on the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic. The special issue on Covid‐19 at JID aims to bring together contemporary research on several aspects of how the devastating effects of the pandemic have panned out in different spheres of life, particularly, in the developing world. This special issue has 10 papers with a particular emphasis on evidence of the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic in Sub‐Saharan Africa and South America. The volume documents studies on the effects of the pandemic at the macro‐level, for economy wide effects, the impact of the pandemic on firms and on its effects on households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent spikes in commodity prices, the growing appetite for primary commodities among emerging economies, growing interest in biofuels and speculations over future returns to land and its products have led to a renewed interest in farmland in the global South. With highly publicized risks and polarized 'win-lose' narratives, so-called 'land grabbing' has become an important focus of transnational governance activity. In juxtaposition to those seeing large-scale land acquisitions as inherently risky or undesirable, some argue for the potential opportunities they engender-provided risks can be mitigated through improved governance. This paper explores this argument through a systematic analysis of the formal features of the multi-sited governance mechanisms in place to guide agricultural investment and govern its social and environmental effects. The intent is not to discount the importance of informal norms and practices or the so-called 'lived experience of governance,' nor the argument that such land acquisitions are inherently flawed irrespective of the 'discipline imposed on them.' Rather, the paper aims to explore the merits of the arguments advanced by the pro-investment camp, and to explore the extent to which the emerging global governance architecture is set up to deliver on the purported benefits of large-scale agricultural investment. Results suggest that serious weaknesses in the substantive scope, reach and/or implementation mechanisms in all of the reviewed governance mechanisms pose a serious risk to the likely effectiveness of the emerging governance architecture in minimizing risks and leveraging benefits. Addressing these weaknesses is an obvious first step for bolstering the credibility of those advocating that governance is the solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan is one of the world's top 10 remittance receiving countries. This paper examines the potential for the use of remittances as a development strategy. Remittances to Pakistan do seem to promote growth and reduce economic inequality and poverty. However, they also cause the Dutch disease, are inflationary, and tend to be pro-cyclical. The paper describes the challenges in employing remittances as the cornerstone of the country's development model, particularly the loss in competitiveness, volatility and the development of a dependency mindset that high remittance inflows can foster. In the end, some steps are suggested that are needed to be taken in this regard. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of human capital and political development in determining the magnitude of the effects of foreign direct investment ( FDI) on growth for a panel of 61 transition and developing countries for the period 1989 to 2013. A baseline growth model incorporating these variables is tested and then extended to include FDI interaction effects with human capital (measured using secondary school enrollment data) and political development (based on Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index scores). These growth interaction effects between FDI and human capital vary according to regime type. Political development in conjunction with FDI appears to suppress the effects of FDI on growth in authoritarian countries while enhancing them in hybrid democracies. For more democratic countries, domestic investment is a more important driver of growth. The effects of FDI on growth in the ten transition economies included in the sample data set are found to be insignificant. Although this result might seem to differ from a priori expectations, it is in line with the findings of most earlier studies that cover the period up to 2004. The paper also provides no strong evidence that a critical threshold of human capital is required to generate beneficial spillover growth effects from inflows of FDI. The paper provides new and more detailed insights into the effects of FDI on growth with particular respect to human capital and political regime covering a large number of transition and developing countries based on an up-to-date data set covering a 25-year period to 2013. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses several issues related to the relationship between finance and development. Link between financial development and economic growth; Role of finance in poverty reduction in developing countries; Stability of the financial system.

The paper is based on the premise that disclosure of patent information is essential for development. Thus, the question posed is related to the extent to which substantive disclosure rules can secure the release of quality patent information that can be easily retrieved and utilized for development. To this end, the paper has made the argument that clear and complete disclosure might not be necessarily adequate to secure disclosure of quality patent information so that access and exploitation of this technical knowledge is less than optimal in developing countries. Apart from that, the research has suggested that improving patent information quality in itself might not be sufficient enough to secure access to this technical knowledge. Because availability of information does not always mean that it is accessible, the paper has analysed impediments to the accessibility of patent information showing that in practical terms, accessibility to technical knowledge might be quite poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major feature of the current 'mass migration' process is its strong linkages to countries of origin. Migrants belong to spatially extended families and play a crucial role in shaping economic development in home regions. This paper reviews the wide-ranging socio-economic literature on the nexus between labor migration, both domestic and international, and economic development at origin, with a special focus on out-migration from poor rural regions of developing countries. We disentangle direct effects on migrant-sending households from spillover effects on the rest of the economy, highlighting some key knowledge gaps and policy concerns related to the complex and intimate relation between rural labour mobility and economic behaviour of people left behind. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Africa's least developed countries (LDCs), escape from poverty and convergence to living standards of more advanced economies depends critically on structural transformation and the emergence of productive entrepreneurship that would accelerate growth and job creation. So far, however, subsistence agriculture has been the main source of employment in these countries, while a dynamic private sector in industry or high value-added services has remained elusive. Utilizing the flow approach to labor markets, this paper complements the empirical literature and numerous surveys on small and medium enterprise (SME) constraints and develops a theoretical framework that examines the main obstacles to entrepreneurship in Africa's LDCs. The paper posits that given the persistent frictions in product and labor markets as well as skill shortages that characterize these economies, development of productive entrepreneurship cannot be left to markets alone. The policy analysis suggests that the state has an important role to play. Well-targeted government interventions including training of potential entrepreneurs and workers can help to establish more modern and highly productive SME clusters that Africa's LDCs need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews available data sources for the study of migration and development through both retrospective and continuous data collection systems. It is argued that much basic data already exists for the study of international migration but that the addition of a relatively small number of simple, although not necessarily cheap measures can be taken to improve existing data. The priority is to generate flow data between countries for recent time periods and the paper makes suggestions how this can be best achieved. The paper goes on to an assessment of the types and availability of data needed to understand better the relationships between migration and development more broadly. Data at several scales, macro and micro, and for a variety of types of migration will be required in order to achieve this objective, particularly if less visible flows, such as those internal to developing countries, or those involving women, are to be better understood. The paper concludes by moving beyond the traditional state-led data-gathering systems to examine the potential for civil society organizations to help in strengthening data and research on migration and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dominant trend in the literature maintains that donor assistance should be targeted at poor countries with sound institutions and policies. In this context, donor selectivity refers to what extent aid is allocated according to the principles of this ‘canonical’ model. This paper shows that it is legitimate for donors to simultaneously use other selectivity criteria corresponding either to expected factors of aid effectiveness or to handicaps to development. It is notably argued that vulnerability to exogenous shocks and low level of human capital should be considered as selectivity criteria. Taking these other criteria into account dramatically changes the assessment of donor selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment in developing countries and re-evaluate the role of the quality of institutions on FDI independently of the general level of development. We implement cross-section estimations based on a newly available database with unprecedented detail on institutions for a set of 52 countries, as well as panel data estimations based on Fraser Institute's data. Furthermore, we control for the correlation between institutions and GDP per capita and for endogeneity of institutions. Finally, we evaluate whether the similarity of institutions between the host and the origin country raises bilateral FDI. We find that a wide range of institutions, including bureaucracy, corruption, but also information, banking sector and legal institutions, do matter for inward FDI independently of GDP per capita. Interestingly, weak capital concentration and strong employment protection tend to reduce inward FDI. Institutional proximity between the origin and the host country also matters, but we find little impact of institutions in the origin country. These results are encouraging in the sense that efforts towards raising the quality of institutions and making them converge towards those of source countries may help developing countries to receive more FDI, independently of the indirect impact of higher GDP per capita. The orders of magnitude found in the paper are large, meaning that moving from a low level to a high level of institutional quality could have as much impact as suddenly becoming a neighbour of a source country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author elaborates the development and refinement of a more human centered approach that she has considered to root out global inequality. Critically analyzing the dominant economic-growth approach taken by many developing countries, the author defends her model of ten central capabilities of a person and analyzes them in terms of political goals. The author also responds individually to several papers including a papers by Des Gasper, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, and others.

The scope of the paper is limited by focusing on developing countries in the context of the world economy. We mostly consider the effects of globalization on income levels and a country's rate of economic growth. This focus is supported by studies (Ravallion; Bourguignon) that find that the level of income and expenditures across a continuum of household income categories is positively associated with economic growth, although wealthy households may benefit more than those with lower income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to analyse the consequence of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed countries on the incidence of child labour in a developing economy in terms of a three-sector general equilibrium model with informal sectors. Adult labour and child labour are substitutes for each other in the two informal sectors of the economy and are used together apart from capital in producing two exportable commodities. The interesting result that appears from the analysis is that agricultural trade liberalization in the developed countries may be effective in bringing down the incidence of child labour in the system. The paper substantiates the desirability of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed nations from the perspective of the developing economies for reasons other than welfare improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the historical evidence on the relationship between globalisation and economic growth. Divergence in the growth of income and industrialisation in the twentieth century is documented but it is also noted that international income inequality appears to have decreased since about 1870 and that long-run trends in the Human Development Index are much less pessimistic about the experience of developing countries. It is argued that trade liberalisation has been good for growth on average but that successful capital liberalisation requires high institutional quality and that the developmental state may have an important role to play in the early stages of development. The recent claim by Robert Lucas that the 21st century will see a massive reduction in income inequality across countries in a globalised world economy is sceptically discussed in the context of empirical evidence that bad institutions are often persistent and that geography is still a major factor in explaining international income differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper criticises the World Bank as overly optimistic with respect to its ability to fine-tune development aid and to focus it on countries with ‘good’ policies rather than on countries with ‘poor’ policies in order to raise its effectiveness. It is shown that recipient regions showed very different patterns of aid inflows and economic growth in the past and that aid flows yielded the highest correlation to growth when their magnitudes shrank. It is furthermore argued that categorising countries by quality of domestic policies is not only questionable at a given point of time especially in countries with failing governmental institutions and open borders as in many African countries. It suffers also from incentive problems so that countries receiving more aid can become victims of changes in their domestic policies which are more permissive and etatist to the disadvantage of private agents. The paper instead pleads for a shift to aid policies decoupled from country-specifics and more oriented to fundamental ‘beyond border’ problems of the well-being of the poor. An international endowment fund under supranational law should finance research and implementation of research findings related to common international goods as it was suggested by Sachs concerning aids and tropical disease research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems of developing countries are well documented and they appear to be growing in magnitude. Although science and technology (S&T) offers a glimmer of hope in dealing with problems of developing countries, policy formulation and implementation have not yielded the desired results. The reasons advanced for the failure of S&T to aid in national development tend to be fragmented and are usually based on the mechanistic worldview. This tends to perpetuate mistakes in policy formulation and implementation. A systemic framework is thus advanced in this paper to enable us to understand the problems encountered in S&T policy formulation. It is hoped that the framework will enable us to start trying to solve the right problem rather than the wrong problems advanced by mechanistic thinkers. The systemic framework advances the following set of problems as critical: inappropriate norms of a nation, inappropriate worldview, and human behavioural constraints in managing complexity. These problems manifest themselves as Kenneth Boulding's (1966) pathologies of intellectual productivity—spurious saliency, unproductive emulation, and cultural lag—resulting in ineffective S&T policy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Irrigation & Drainage is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Review of Policy Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the factors driving manufacturing growth accelerations in a sample of 134 developing countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We first identify growth acceleration episodes of manufacturing value added (MVA) by their year of initiation and according to a country's income classification. We then estimate a probit model to explain what factors predict these MVA growth accelerations. Our results show that human capital and institutions represent contextual factors that favor the growth of manufacturing, together with macroeconomic policies related to investment, and openness to foreign trade and capital. We also find that most of these factors not only foster episodic accelerations of industry, but they contribute as well to a sustained process of industrialization that characterized the process of economic growth of a few successful countries over the period 1970 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries benefit from the registration of geographical indications (GIs) in the agricultural and artisan sectors. The extension of GIs to the artisan sector serves as a best practice to Nigeria. Nigeria has many indigenous forms of cultural artworks that are influenced by the environment. Artworks from places like Benin and other regions in Nigeria are location specific. This paper explores generally the utilization of GIs to protect cultural artworks and the monetary and nonmonetary benefits of such works. The trend of registering GIs to protect culture, arts, and traditional knowledge is crucial to the economic growth of Nigeria otherwise it deprives those dependent on the creation of cultural artworks of a means to benefit from their hard work by a process known to them for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How far does mobility of multinational banks solve problems of financial development? Using a panel of 80,000 loans over 7 years, I show that greater cultural and geographical distance between a foreign bank's headquarters and local branches leads it to further avoid lending to "informationally difficult" yet fundamentally sound firms requiring relational contracting. Greater distance also makes them less likely to bilaterally renegotiate, and less successful at recovering defaults. Differences in bank size, legal institutions, risk preferences, or unobserved borrower heterogeneity cannot explain these results. These distance constraints can be large enough to permanently exclude certain sectors of the economy from financing by foreign banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper returns to the question of what is the correct structural form for the relationship between aid, other financial flows, and economic growth rates, using a cross-section approach and -- for the first time -- data for the entire 1980s as well as the 1960s and 1970s. For the 1980s the aggregate partial regression coefficient of aid on growth emerges, for the first time, as positive and Gust) significant, although this result does not survive the partitioning of the sample into sub-groups. It remains obvious that the effect of aid on growth is country-specific, and in the later part of the paper we test a new approach under which aid effectiveness passes through a cycle, first increasing and then diminishing as a country's stage of economic development alters. If this approach is accepted (and the initial results, with an informal test, are promising) the overall cross-section relationship between aid and growth, abstracting from other influences, will be neutral in most periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the arguments of the critics of foreign aid and other capital inflows to less developed countries (LDCs). The paper finds that the critics lack sufficient evidence on the supposedly adverse effect of capital transfers to LDCs on their savings and growth of incomes. This, however, does not mean that these capital inflows always promote growth in LDCs. In particular, it is shown that the relative importance of foreign capital on economic growth of LDCs would depend on the degree to which that growth is constrained by the lack of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to examine the political and administrative limits on the effective implementation of privatization in developing countries and so to present a challenge to the view that slow progress is primarily attributable to economic constraints. After examining these economic aspects, the paper provides an explanatory framework which incorporates those political and administrative processes central to an understanding of what happens to state economic policies in practice. The significance of these processes is demonstrated by drawing on research material from India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The conclusion drawn is that responses to pressures for economic reform will be determined, not so much by economic criteria as by the political and bureaucratic resources available to decision makers. Since policy processes in developing countries show considerable variety it is likely that there will be substantial variations in the practical achievement of privatization objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new economic geography ( NEG) has been tested to explain the spatial concentration of wages in developed countries, but it has not been evaluated for developing countries where the excessive spatial concentration seems to be related with negative consequences on the economic development. This paper covers this gap in the literature estimating by first time a NEG model for a developing country such as Chile, pursuing two research question: (1) Can the NEG explain the spatial distribution of wages in a developing country as Chile?; and (2) How can the NEG be used to infer information about the future level of spatial concentration of wages in Chile? The results suggest that the case of Chile is poorly explained by the NEG and even higher level of spatial concentration should be expected in the future. These results indicate that the empirical application of NEG is not trivial for developing countries, and some considerations such as inclusion of the first nature or analysis at micro data level must be incorporated by future researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a dynamic spatial framework, this paper investigates how foreign direct investment ( FDI), foreign aid and remittances impact the economic growth of 53 African and 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Previous growth studies examine how one factor or two of these factors impacts economic growth, which results in biased estimation because of the omitted variable(s). Separate estimation shows foreign aid and FDI affects economic growth in Africa, but when we control for all three factors, only FDI affects African economic growth. For Latin America and the Caribbean, foreign aid and remittances affect growth when estimated separately, while remittances affect growth when they are estimated simultaneously. Finally, both regions' results confirm spatial interdependence is important in explaining economic growth, as growth in one country depends on the growth of its neighboring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data, the paper studies the time-series evidence regarding the allocation of fluctuations in the exchange rate between demand components, real growth and price inflation in a sample of developing and advanced countries. Subsequently, cross-country correlations establish the relevance of fluctuations in imports to the pass-through channel of exchange rate fluctuations to economic activity. Further, the evidence evaluates the direct effects of fluctuations in the nominal values of imports on price inflation and real growth. Cross-country regressions evaluate the effects of variation in the average and variability of exchange rate fluctuations on import growth. Subsequently, variation in indicators of macroeconomic performance (real growth, price inflation and the growth of private consumption and investment) is evaluated with respect to variation in the exchange rate and/or import growth. In developing countries, the evidence indicates the relevance of fluctuations in import growth to the transmission mechanism of exchange rate fluctuations to the macroeconomy. Where this relationship dominates, fluctuations in the exchange rate are no longer significant to the difference in macroeconomic indicators, having controlled for variation in import growth across countries. In advanced countries, import fluctuations may be transmitted to economic activity, further to fluctuations in the exchange rate, in line with variations in terms of trade. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the relevant characteristics. It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China. It analyses the institutions and methods that were introduced to create a developmental state, in particular the incentive structures that the leadership used to solve the principal-agent problem implicit in having centralised political control but decentralised economic management. These include personnel policies, fiscal decentralisation and patronage relationships. That leads to a review of its successes, limitations and adverse consequences and to the question: can China's developmental state be sustained? Among these issues are the great socioeconomic changes that rapid economic growth has entailed - which have strengthened the case for broadening government policy objectives beyond the previous narrow focus on growth. Conclusions are drawn for both China and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between credit market development and economic growth for a heterogeneous panel of 20 developing and developed countries with varied growth experiences. The empirical study is based on estimations of generalized method of moments (GMM) and pooled mean group (PMG) on heterogeneous panel data model. Difference GMM estimation indicates that credit market development has a negative effect on economic growth. This result is robust for our full sample and for the subsample of non-OECD countries, but not for the subsample of OECD countries. However, using a PMG model, we provide evidence of a positive impact in the long run between credit market development and economic growth. When considering heterogeneity in the short-run relationship across countries, our findings suggest that the credit-growth relationship is specific across countries, depending on each country-specific legal and macroeconomic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global agenda of sustainable development (SD) will get a major boost from the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries. This requires effective planning and understanding of the SDGs at the national level and developing sound SDG indicators that account for country priorities. Currently, there is no formal SDG indicator set in India, but the process for it is underway. This paper has attempted to propose a unique technique for identifying the most representative indicator set for SD measurement in India based on the SDGs. Considering the needs and preferences of the country, a three‐stage process is proposed to develop the priority indicator set. The application of the approach has been presented for SDG 7, which relates to energy. This is supported with a background on India's SD progress. The proposed technique is simple yet effective, and can be easily replicated by other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper argues that recent developments in practice and theory provide a more promising basis for public service reform in developing countries than we have had since at least the turn of the century. There have been significant instances of large‐scale reform success, such as Nepal's Public Service Commission and Malaysia's delivery unit, Pemandu, and also “pockets of effectiveness” in individual agencies in many countries. They contribute to a more fruitful and diverse repertoire of reform approaches than generally realized. Policymakers can draw on all those instances and types of reform, together with relevant rich country experiences, as they improvise and tailor responses to their always unique reform problems. Proceeding in this way helps reformers to expand the “reform space” available within the political economy. Donors can help reformers if they facilitate reform in the spirit of the Busan Partnership rather than impose their preferred models. In short, the new direction which this paper identifies can be stated as creative problem solving by local actors facilitated by sympathetic donors, building on examples of reform success and drawing on a repertoire of poor and rich country reform approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers first identified aquaculture as an important field of study during the 1990s, pointing to a 'net deficit' in geographical knowledge about the activity. This paper examines how far geographers have come in bridging this knowledge deficit in the last 20 years. While increasing attention has focused on the political economy of export products consumed in the global North, 'everyday' geographies of aquaculture production and consumption in the global South have been neglected. We argue that paying greater attention to everyday aquaculture in the global South provides opportunities for geographers to engage with wider questions around development and change that extend far beyond aquaculture. By focusing on changing patterns of aquaculture production for Southern domestic markets, geographers can provide a counterpoint to Northern dominated agro-food studies by re-emphasising the importance of consumption, urbanisation and agrarian transitions from a more place-based perspective and, in doing so, support the development of theory that reflects Southern realties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Tourism in small island developing states (SIDS) has long been defined in terms of dependency. However, less attention has been paid to the role of the state in SIDS, particularly the extent to which it supports tourism as an agent of development. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to consider the governance of tourism development in SIDS, specifically the extent to which the state may promote or hinder tourism-related development. Drawing on research in Zanzibar, it reveals the ways in which poor governance has acted as a barrier to development through tourism, concluding that the state has an unwillingness to support tourism. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price surveys from the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) imply substantially lower levels of GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) for many developing countries than prior estimates. While some observers have questioned the data, this paper argues that the pattern of changes in PPPs between ICP rounds makes economic sense. Consistently with the original Balassa-Samuelson model, more rapidly growing economies experienced steeper increases in their PPPs relative to official exchange rates. This effect was even stronger for poor countries. Taking account of this effect would reduce the need for such large data revisions when new ICP data become available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether and to what extent evident trade reform, falling average tariffs and rising exports in recent decades overstate the extent to which protectionism has declined in developing countries, especially low-income developing countries. It identifies remaining significant protection, especially of final manufactured goods; this being associated with the presence of peak tariffs, escalating tariff structures by stage of production and replacement of old forms of non-tariff protection with new instruments of non-tariff protection. It also identifies significant protection arising from high international trade costs induced by inefficiencies in transportation, ports and customs, and from the growth of exports to preference-receiving, export markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows evidence of strong heterogeneity in the relationship between government size and growth, depending on the quality of public sector institutions. Focusing on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1981-2005, we find that government size reduces growth when bureaucracy quality is low, whereas no significant effect is observed for sufficiently high levels of bureaucracy quality. The results hold both in cross-section and panel data analyses and are robust to a large number of robustness checks. These findings have important implications for assessing the role of government size in economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causality between remittances and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. We employ the panel Granger causality testing approach that is based on seemingly unrelated regressions systems and Wald tests with country-specific bootstrap critical values. Using annual data over the period 1980-2007 for 20 SSA countries, we find that in any SSA country, there is no causality between remittances and growth. An explanation of why remittances do not increase growth in SSA countries is given by the causality test that shows that remittances do not increase physical capital investment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past two decades, there has been unprecedented attention to the promotion of human development via government spending in the social sectors as a conditio sine qua non for economic growth and improved aggregate welfare. Yet the existing evidence on the subject remains limited and contested. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the causal effect of government spending on the social sectors (health, education and social protection) on three measures of aggregate welfare: the Human Development Index, the Inequality‐adjusted Human Development Index and child mortality rates, using longitudinal data from 55 low‐income and middle‐income countries from 1990 to 2009. We find strong evidence to support the proposition that government social spending has played a significant role in improving aggregate welfare in the developing world. Our results are fairly robust to, inter alia, the method of estimation, the set of control variables and the use of alternative samples and instruments. © 2017 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence that there is no convergence between the GDP per-capita of the developing countries since 1950. Relying upon recent econometric methodologies (non-stationary long-memory models, wavelet models and time-varying factor representation models), we show that the transition paths to long-run growth (the catch-up dynamics) are very persistent over time and non-stationary, thereby yielding a variety of potential steady states (conditional convergence). Our findings do not support the idea according to which the developing countries share a common factor (such as technology) that eliminates per-capita output divergence in the very long run. Instead, we conclude that growth is an idiosyncratic phenomenon that yields different forms of transitional economic performance: growth tragedy (some countries with an initial low level of per-capita income diverge from the richest ones), growth resistance (with many countries experiencing a low speed of growth convergence), and rapid convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing empirical studies and policy reports provide ambiguous results on the growth effect of foreign aid flows in the recipient countries. The present paper examines whether there exists an aid threshold that determines the growth impact of foreign aid. We use a threshold regression methodology to estimate growth specifications and the associated aid thresholds in a sample of 42 aid recipients covering the period 1970-2000. Our findings indicate that there is a threshold level of aid, above which the growth impact of aid becomes positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute poverty reduction and lower inequality. But policy action needs to be better served by analysis and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'green tourism' is often used in conjunction with the desire for a balanced approach to tourism planning. 'Green tourism' is defined as tourism that enhances the local cultural elements, operating under the control of local communities, providing employment and maintaining the economic benefits within the local communities. In fact, the above definition is often poorly attested, since there are times when the economic benefits escape from local communities. For its part the tourist industry uses the term 'green tourism' as a message to tourists on energy saving, avoiding coastal pollution etc. Sometimes the same tourist businesses are accused of using the label 'green' primarily for marketing purposes. This paper shows that governments have a crucial role regarding encouragement to use cleaner technologies in the tourism sector and presenting different approaches for sustainability to be achieved in developing countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing countries affect the growth of local firms in host countries? Using a dataset of 38 sectors in China's electrical and electronics industry, in this paper, we analyze whether FDI has a positive effect on local firms, with technology spillovers, added value and increasing total factor productivity, or a negative, market stealing, effect. Estimating the relationship between growth of local firms and investment of foreign firms, our results show that FDI is likely to have a negative impact on the growth of local firms in sectors with large disparities in technology and less experience in business. Therefore, local firms lacking in technology need to find markets with no competition from foreign firms or determine strategies to compensate technology disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between regional trade agreements, trade integration and economic growth in 21 South and South-East Asian countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We aim to answer the following questions. First, how does the trade policy of a given country (and countries within the same region) affect a nation's domestic growth? Second, should developing economies in South and South-East Asia engage in regional trade agreements (RTA) or move towards broad liberalization? Our results show that openness of either a single country or of its neighbors does not affect a nation's growth and that the impacts of RTA are unclear (if not detrimental to growth in some cases, once endogeneity is accounted for). Panel Granger-causality tests running from openness to growth yield mixed results and some conclusions depend on the particular subsample under scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Indigenous people in the poorest developing countries of the world confront the most severe hardships, nevertheless even in the most developed countries such as Australia, Indigenous standards of living in terms of economic, educational and basic human standards are far inferior to other groups within society. It has been argued that Indigenous affairs in Australia is divided into 'two ideological tribes' both vigorously opposed with respect to the preferred manner in which the substantial disadvantage of Indigenous Australians can be overcome. Although more complex categorisations of ideological positions are possible, both maintain considerable influence within the field of Indigenous policy formulation in Australia and in the Northern Territory in particular, where nearly 30 per cent of the total population is Indigenous. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the central arguments advanced by these two sides of the debate and the implications for public policy decision making and Indigenous people, within the context of the Northern Territory of Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, interest has soared in the development potential of well-designed cash transfer programs. One particular application is the use of transfers by resource-rich countries (as recently initiated by Iran) to distribute rents across their populations. An emerging body of research suggests that the development impact of such programs tends to be positive and that, especially when received by poor individuals or households, they can unlock constraints on economic activities, allowing a further increase in income. This paper considers the use of biometric technology to underpin transfer programs and how new technology is opening up possibilities for effective transfer programs that, up to now, have only been a theoretical option in the institutional conditions that prevail in many developing countries. Once implemented, biometric identification systems can be used to support a wide range of other development initiatives including banking, voting, health care, and general identification systems. The paper reviews some of the programs using these technologies and how it is enabling poor countries to leapfrog rich ones in the area of identity, much as the cellphone revolution did in the area of communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the economic literature on the effects of food aid on recipient developing countries. It reviews the conceptual and empirical challenges associated with evaluating the impact of food aid and surveys the main analytical techniques that are used in such evaluations. It then summarises the available empirical evidence on the effect of food aid on national economic development, domestic agricultural production and markets, commercial trade and the nutritional status of recipients. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective relations between states and business have been increasingly identified as an important institution for sustaining economic development. This paper constructs quantitative indices measuring the quality of state-business relations (SBRs) across Indian states in the 1985-2008 period. It represents the first effort to systematically characterise SBRs across sub-national units within a country without resorting to subjective surveys. We discuss the possible sensitivity of the indices to minor and major definitional changes and examine the evolution of SBRs across Indian states and at the national level through the study of cross-sectional and secular trends in these indices. The results suggest that SBRs have improved over time in all states barring Bihar. Rankings of states in terms of the SBR index show varying time trends-stable and high ranks for states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, stable and low ranks for states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, rapidly improving ranks for states like Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and swift deterioration in ranks for states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pessimistic flavour of the Human Development Reports appears to be in contradiction with their own numbers as developing countries fare comparatively better in human development than in per capita GDP terms. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing a new, 'improved' human development index (IHDI), informed by welfare economics. The IHDI is presented here alongside the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) HDI for the world and its main regions since the late 19th century. Social dimensions in the IHDI are derived, following ( Journal of Development Economics 41 (1993), pp. 307-336), with a convex achievement function, whereas a geometric average is employed to combine its dimensions (longevity, knowledge and income). Thus, the IHDI does not conceal the gap between rich and poor countries and casts a much less optimistic view than the conventional UNDP index, while it fits with the UNDP concern for international differences. The paper's findings highlight main weaknesses in human development dimensions of present-day developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies and analyses the extent of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the service sector in developed and developing countries. Services account for an increasing share of global FDI. Recognition of the economic benefits of FDI clashes with nationalistic economic, political and national security concerns about foreign takeover of ‘strategic’ sectors, such as telecommunications, finance and transport. Consequently, almost all countries impose restrictions on FDI in services. Several different types of restrictions are considered: limitations on foreign ownership, screening or notification procedures, management restrictions and operational restrictions. These restrictions on FDI are computed at the industry level and then aggregated into a single measure for the service sector as a whole for 23 developed and 50 developing countries. Notwithstanding the worldwide trend towards liberalisation of restrictions, there remain substantial disparities between regions and individual countries in the severity of restrictions on inward FDI in services. The lowest restriction scores are in Europe and Latin America, whereas East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East have the highest levels of restrictions. The evolution over time of FDI restrictions is also presented for developed countries over the period 1981–2005, showing liberalisation in all countries, especially since the early 1990s, although to varying extents across countries. The severity of restrictions also differs considerably by sector, with electricity, telecommunications, transport and finance most restricted. The paper also finds a strong negative correlation of restrictiveness with inward stocks of FDI in services, suggesting that restrictions impede FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Libyan government emphasises the importance of tourism in economic diversification through its Libyan Tourism Master Plan identifying various initiatives to develop the Libyan tourism industry, including human resource development (HRD). Hotels are key to an internationally competitive industry and human resources critical to perceptions of service quality. This paper analyses issues relating to the Libyan hotel sector, including the need to strengthen the private sector; to match education/training programmes to industrial needs, and to address cultural and religious dimensions which exacerbate poor industry image. The paper identifies a partnership approach between governmental, educational and hotel sectors to address HRD issues through workforce planning. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the Kumar and Russell [ American Economic Review (2002) Vol. 92, pp. 527–548] growth-accounting procedure to examine cross-country growth during the 1990s. Using a data set comprising developed, newly industrialized, developing and transitional economies, we decompose the growth of output per worker into components attributable to technological catch-up, technological change and capital accumulation. In contrast to the study by Kumar and Russell, which concludes that capital deepening is the major force of growth and change in the world income per worker distribution over the 1965–90 period, our analysis shows that, during the 1990s, the major force in the further divergence of the rich and the poor is due to technological change, whereas capital accumulation plays a lesser and opposite role. Finally, although on average we find that transitional economies perform similar to the rest of the world, the procedure is able to discover some interesting patterns within the set of transitional countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models the allocation of bilateral foreign development aid to developing countries. A simple theoretical framework is developed, in which aid is treated as a private good of a donor country bureaucratic group responsible for bilateral aid allocation. This model is applied to time series data for ten principal recipients of bilateral official development assistance. Features of this application are that it caters for the joint determination of aid allocations and for donor allocation behavior to differ among individual recipient countries. Results indicate that both recipient need and donor interest variables determine the amount of foreign aid to developing countries, and that donor allocation behavior often differs markedly among recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous aid effectiveness research often claims that foreign aid has been unsuccessful in increasing growth rates. This result could be due either to methodological weaknesses, or to genuine aid efficiency losses. Empirically, the author finds that once the best available techniques are employed, aid has a significant but moderate average effect on growth over the period 1970–2001. A promising explanation of why the estimated returns to aid are not larger is that bilateral aid had no significant effect on growth during the Cold War (pre-1990), but had a significant and sizeable effect thereafter. In contrast, multilateral aid seems to have had sizeable and significant effects throughout. These results imply that the negative conclusions drawn by earlier research should be interpreted in their proper historical context, rather than as a necessary condemnation of current aid effectiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today rapidly growing economies depend more on the creation, acquisition, distribution, and use of knowledge. As such, strategies for enhancing research and innovation capabilities have come to occupy a more important position in many developing nations, including China. Already the leading production center, and often seen as China's economic locomotive, Shanghai is striving aggressively to retain its national preeminence and has launched concerted efforts to increase local innovative output. The primary purpose of this paper is to understand how state-led efforts have fared in promoting technology innovation. By situating the city in the national and global context, the paper shows that Shanghai has gained a substantial lead in developing an innovation environment with extensive global linkages and leading research institutions. Recent efforts in building up the research and innovation capacity of the enterprise sector have begun to show progress. Although firms are enthusiastic about its future as an innovation center, Shanghai continues to face challenges of inadequate protection of intellectual property, lack of venture capital investment, and the tightening supply of highly qualified knowledge workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter-cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro-cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors - military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful industrialization and catch up of countries in the East Asian region gave rise to an important debate concerning the role played by technological learning and knowledge creation. This paper seeks to examine this issue for Indonesia, a second-tier newly industrializing country. It focuses on the relative importance of learning from imported inputs vis-à-vis other factors influencing productivity in manufacturing. The concept of learning is operationalized drawing on the literature on technology spillovers on the one hand, and the literature on catch up à la Abramovitz, on the other. Our results indicate that knowledge spillovers have become significant contributors to labor productivity growth after the liberalization of the Indonesian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces salient aspects of the evolution of fiscal policy in sub-Saharan Africa since 1960 and highlights the need for further reforms to consolidate the gains of the recent past. The fiscal position of the sub-Saharan African region as a whole has improved markedly during the past ten years, but most countries still face formidable fiscal challenges. To consolidate the progress made during the past decade and to tackle the remaining problems, sub-Saharan African policymakers should remain firmly committed to sound fiscal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the possible effects of the US reform of the international settlement rate system on telecommunications investment in Africa. We estimate a telecommunications investment equation using a panel data of 51 African countries during the 1991–2003 period and find that settlement payments have significantly positive effects on telecommunications investment in African countries. A 10 percent increase in settlement payment, on average, increases the telecommunications investment expenditure to GDP ratio by 3.4 percent over a three-year period. Using previously calculated revenue loss from the US reform, our estimates suggest that African countries stand to lose between 4.4 to 11 percentage points of their telecommunications investment in the medium run and with it, possible decreases in income growth rate. However, we argue that African countries can counter the effects of this revenue loss by increasing the efficiency of telecommunications investment through appropriate market restructuring, including the promotion of competition and privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is understood and perceived in Estonia – a post-socialist country that has recently become capitalist. In order to understand the importance of the context, this paper offers an overview of the main results of surveys conducted about the transition process in Estonia and presents the different development stages describing business purposes and perceived responsibilities in the last 20 years in Estonia. The purpose of business and corporate responsibility, or CSR, is a topic that has been widely discussed and debated in most developed countries of the world. Over the past 20 years, the field has grown rapidly, and it is still gaining importance every day.

This paper constructs a dynamic North–South trade model with outsourcing and endogenous innovation. Production of high quality goods is first performed in the North (Northern phase), then split between the North and the South (Outsourcing phase), and finally shifted to the South (Southern phase). This cycle is reignited whenever a Northern firm innovates a higher quality product. We find that an increase in the fraction of outsourced production raises the Northern skill premium unambiguously, while raising the Southern skill premium if and only if the skill intensity of outsourced production is higher than that of local Southern production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key goal of renewable resource managers in developing countries is to take actions to ensure that the resource being managed stays away from irreversible or crisis states, in which it provides neither consumptive nor non-consumptive services to humans. However, despite a manager's best efforts, the resource may still hit a crisis state. Therefore, given a particular management regime, it is useful to know how long it takes until the resource hits a crisis state. In this paper, the authors provide a theoretical analysis of this hitherto unstudied question. They first probabilistically delineate two management regimes. Next, they compute the expected time until crisis for both these regimes. Finally, they provide a numerical example to illustrate the working of their model and then discuss the implications of their findings for renewable resource management in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates various channels through which foreign technology diffuses to the manufacturing sector of developing economies. These economies undertake virtually no own R&D, so they rely on foreign technology to a much larger extent than developed economies. We investigate the direct effect of foreign R&D, as well as technology embodied in imports of intermediate and capital goods and foreign direct investment, on the growth of total factor productivity and value added in the manufacturing sector of 32 economies during 1965–92. We find that foreign R&D typically has the biggest positive impact on domestic productivity and value-added growth. Imports of capital goods and foreign direct investment also play a similar role, but their effect is of smaller magnitude and is not always significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]