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Motivation: How can poorer developing countries escape the vicious circle in which, because the state is fragile, they cannot raise sufficient public revenue to be able to finance development, leading to the persistence of poverty and state fragility? We explore a new approach to this problem, which we call progressive fiscal contracts, in which government earmarks the proceeds of particular taxes to be spent on forms of expenditure which will have widespread benefits for lower income groups, such as health, education and social protection. Taxpayers are thus offered a contractual relationship with government (better‐targeted delivery of public services in return for tax payments) in place of a coercive one (simply being ordered to pay taxes, with nothing being offered in exchange). We seek to examine whether this kind of contractual approach offers a way forward for developing countries. Purpose: Across five countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Ghana and Zambia) between 2000 and 2015, we seek to find out whether tax yields have improved following the introduction of progressive fiscal contracts, whether conflict and poverty have declined, and whether there have been countervailing costs in terms of reduced efficiency. We also examine the experience of two countries (Brazil and Chile) where there is no formal earmarking but government has encouraged the public to think of particular taxes as being associated with particular forms of expenditure. Approach and methods: We assess the impact of changes in tax yields, welfare indicators and conflict indicators by means of panel‐data regressions, tabular comparisons and, in Bolivia, qualitative interviews. Changes in efficiency are assessed through examination of changes in tax structure. Findings: Across all of the countries surveyed, the introduction of progressive fiscal contracts has been associated with a reduction in headcount poverty between 2000 and 2015, and in Bolivia our qualitative evidence suggests that the relationship can be seen as a causal one. In three cases out of five (Ghana, Bolivia and Ecuador) tax yields have increased, and in two (Bolivia and Ecuador) there was a significant reduction in political violence. In the Latin American cases examined, but not the African ones, there was a shift from royalty‐based taxation to income‐based taxation of natural resources, suggesting the likelihood of an improvement in efficiency over the period in those countries only. In these cases, the stereotypical view that progressive fiscal contracts improve equity at the expense of efficiency is contradicted. Policy implications (or conclusions): Progressive fiscal contracts, which originated as a device for making tax payments more palatable by offering social benefits in return, show promise as an innovative strategy for boosting tax ratios, reducing political violence and reducing poverty, which deserves further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tanzania's One Plan II health sector program aims to increase facility deliveries from 50 to 80% from 2015 to 2020. Success is uneven among certain Maasai pastoralist women in Northern Tanzania who robustly prefer home births to facility births even after completing 4+ ANC visits. Ebiotishu Oondomonok Ongera (EbOO) is a program in Nainokanoka ward to promote facility births through a care-group model using trained traditional birth attendants (TBAs) as facilitators. Results to date are promising but show a consistent gap between women completing ANC and those going to a facility for delivery. A qualitative study was conducted to understand psychosocial preferences, agency for decision-making, and access barriers that influence where a woman in the ward will deliver.Methods: In-depth interviews, focus group discussions and key-informant interviews were conducted with 24 pregnant and/or parous women, 24 TBAs, 3 nurse midwives at 3 health facilities, and 24 married men, living in Nainokanoka ward. Interviews and discussions were transcribed, translated, and analyzed thematically using a grounded theory approach.Results: Most women interviewed expressed preference for a home birth with a TBA and even those who expressed agency and preference for a facility birth usually had their last delivery at home attributed to unexpected labor. TBAs are engaged by husbands and play a significant influential role in deciding place of delivery. TBAs report support for facility deliveries but in practice use them as a last resort, and a significant trust gap was documented based on a bad experience at a facility where women in labor were turned away.Conclusions: EbOO project data and study results show a slow but steady change in norms around delivery preference in Nainokanoka ward. Gaps between expressed intention and practice, especially around 'unexpected labor' present opportunities to accelerate this process by promoting birth plans and perhaps constructing a maternity waiting house in the ward. Rebuilding trust between facility midwives, TBAs, and the community on the availability of health facility services, and increased sensitivity to women's cultural preferences, could also close the gap between the number of women who are currently using facilities for ANC and those returning for delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to understand both the incidence and the impact of the African political business cycle in the light of a literature which has argued that, with major extensions of democracy since the 1990s, the cycle has both become more intense and has made African political systems more fragile. With the help of country case studies, we argue, first, that the African political business cycle is not homogeneous, and occurs relatively infrequently in so-called ‘dominant-party systems’ where a pre-election stimulus confers little political advantage. Secondly, we show that, in those countries where a political cycle does occur, it does not necessarily cause institutional damage. Whether it does or not depends not so much on whether there is an electoral cycle as on whether this cycle calms or exacerbates fears of an unjust allocation of resources. In other words, the composition of the pre-election stimulus, in terms of its allocation between different categories of voter, is as important as its size. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

University course assignments increasingly focus on group work and group projects to help students collaboratively discover more about their fields of study. The Thomas G. Carpenter Library realized the need to investigate means for reimagining itself to better accommodate today's researchers. The complex process of planning for the redesign of both services and space undertaken by the library is described and explained in this first of a planned series of articles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary In the long run tax effort, we argue, determines the effectiveness of aid, and this relationship operates simultaneously with the negative link in the opposite direction observed by Bräutigam and Knack (2004) and others. Tax effort and the ability of the state to diversify its taxation structure, we find, are significantly linked to growth and poverty indicators. The key message for policy is that a broadening of the tax structure in low-income countries is crucial in order to enable those countries to escape from the “weak-state–low-tax trap,” and to make aid effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potentially, community development finance institutions (CDFIs) represent a promising complement to the welfare system in its attempts to reduce poverty, since they provide finance to the financially excluded and potentially remove a barrier to their acquisition of assets. Drawing on a new survey of around 360 households in four UK cities, surveyed both before and after the 2008/09 recession, it is found that a major factor determining whether low-income households receiving CDFI loans are able to exit from poverty is their ability to save. This is found to be determined by a variety of attitudinal and institutional factors, including the ‘rationality’ of their coping strategies, the nature and extent of social networks and the extent of their access to money advice. It is argued that some of these causal factors are amenable to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: We build on Bulir and Hamann’s analysis of aid volatility [Bulir, A., & Hamann, J. (2003). Aid volatility: An empirical assessment. IMF Staff Papers, 50(1), 64–89; Bulir, A., & Hamann, J. (2008) Volatility of development aid: From the frying pan into the fire? Washington DC: IMF, paper submitted to this Special Section], showing that the conclusions reached depend on the dataset used. Their argument that the poorest countries have the highest volatility appears not to be correct. The impact of volatility on growth is negative overall, but differs between positive and negative volatility. The mix between “responsive” components of aid, for example, programme aid, and “proactive” components, for example, technical assistance, is important. Finally, we conclude that measures which increase trust between donor and recipient, and reductions in the degree of donor “oligopoly,” reduce aid volatility without obviously reducing its effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article reconsiders the view that the poor are trapped into poverty as a result of their risk aversion, precluding the level of investment needed to lift them out of poverty. The starting point is the experimental methods of Binswanger who found no significant association between risk aversion and low income. Using experimental data from Uganda, Ethiopia and India the article confirms these early findings, and provides estimates of the correlation between the variables involved in the ‘vicious circle of poverty’. The paper concludes that there is generally little relationship between risk aversion and an income measure of poverty, but a strong relationship between the latter and asset levels and returns. Cet article reconsidère l'idée que les pauvres sont enferrés dans la pauvreté du fait de leur aversion au risque, qui empêche la constitution de l'investissement nécessaire pour les sortir de cette situation. Le point de départ de l'analyse repose sur les méthodes expérimentales de Binswanger, qui a mis en évidence l'absence de corrélation significative entre l'aversion au risque et les bas revenus. A partir de données expérimentales sur l'Ouganda, l'Ethiopie et l'Inde, l'article confirme ces résultats initiaux, et fournit des estimations sur le degré de corrélation entre les variables impliquées dans le . L'article conclut qu'il y a généralement peu de rapport entre l'aversion au risque et une mesure de la pauvreté [agrave] ; partir du revenu, mais en revanche une relation étroite entre cette dernière et le niveau et la rentabilité des actifs détenus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great hopes have been held out for microfinance and other community development finance institutions (CDFIs) in industrialized countries as an instrument of“financially sustainable welfare provision”, following on from their success in many developing countries. Using interview data drawn from an exploratory sample of 45 clients, this paper examines the social and economic impact of three microfinance institutions in Glasgow, Sheffield and Belfast. The tentative conclusion is that most loans we examined do hit the target of the“financially excluded but bankable”, and exert an impact on poverty and social exclusion through the labour market and through helping to build social networks which reduce interpersonal risk. Our initial estimate is that each loan studied here was responsible for about 0.67 exits from unemployment over the two years 2000–2. If this ratio holds good outside the sample (and we emphasize the limitations of small sample size), this could mean that in the absence of microfinance services, the national unemployment total would be higher by some 2.4 per cent (or 22,000 individuals). The loans we have examined also save about£0.4 million on what would otherwise have been social security payments; grossed up again to all microfinance organizations, this implies an annual saving of about£250 million (1.4 per cent) on the total social security budget. However, to achieve this optimal impact microfinance institutions need to diversify their product: for example by switching from business loans into consumption loans, micro-insurance, and equity, particularly in the rehabilitation of run-down council estates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the global trend towards democratization has made more difficult the imposition of stabilization technologies with high social costs, particularly reducing public expenditure, and has resulted to shifts in the balance of public spending away from social and towards security and military expenditures. Similar trend observed in the policies of international agencies since the 1990s; Argument that the pro-poor trend is not something which simply happens within governments and that with globalization has come a decentralization of social policy responsibilities.

Since risk and the inability to control it is a fundamental cause of underdevelopment, insurance should be an important remedy. The microfinance movement has been slow to move into insurance but is now beginning to develop some useful prototypes, especially in the health and life insurance area; other much-needed forms of insurance such as theft and drought insurance have been slower to develop at the bottom end of the market. This article reports on the initial impact assessment of two health micro-insurance schemes, one operated by BRAC and one operated by FINCA (Foundation for Community Assistance) Uganda. It demonstrates evidence of positive effects on investment, loan growth, and, to a lesser extent, on repayment rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of informal social groups is considered important, both in the process of poverty reduction and of democratisation in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Lack of social capital, and lack of resources to build it, has led to the creation of a new social class: the "new poor". Microfinance is viewed as an effective tool for overcoming the social and political exclusion of the poor. This article is based on the results of a research study, conducted in three MFOs in Russia, Romania and Slovakia, which aimed to study the link between microfinance and social capital formation. The results indicate that microfinance appears not to be associated with higher levels of formal, but rather with the development of informal associations, which result in greater levels of trust and more capacity for political participation. Informal associations seem to be more cohesive where there is strong leadership. Political participation itself tends most often to be of an informal nature rather than consisting of formal activism within political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the commitment of Great Britain to the alleviation of world poverty in its White Papers on International Development. Impact of globalization on the poor; Details on the reform policies indicated in the documents; Dependency of the livelihood of the poor on the labor market.

Addresses questions concerning the impact of microfinance on the different dimensions of poverty in Bolivia. Microfinance design technology in Bolivia; Variety of lending models and their impact on poverty reduction; Discussion of the gaps in the structure of informal microfinance.

Focuses on the goal of the Department for International Development to achieve global redistribution and poverty reduction in Great Britain. Changes in the basic aid instrument nature; Impartation of the government aids to non-governmental organizations; Abolition of the aid-trade program to promote developmental policies.

Evaluates the attainability of the International Development Targets on poverty and social problems in transitional regions. Ability of the economic system to satisfy consumption requirements of the population; Correlation between income inequality levels and target achievement; Importance of labor-intensive measures in poverty reduction.

Comments on the article about the predictive performance of two contrasted models of the allocation of economic aid by Western donor countries between different less developed countries, by R. McKinlay and R. Little, published in the June 1979 issue of the journal "Political Studies." Consistency of the German, British and American aid during the 1960s with the donor interest model in which the amount of aid given to a country is directly proportional to its political and/or economic usefulness to the donor; Details about the recipient need model; Evaluation of the extent to which the findings of McKinlay and Little apply to other countries.

This paper interprets the British government's failure to achieve better control of the business cycle, not in terms of technical inefficiency, but as a politically rational pursuit of a class of 'floating voters' perceived by it to change their economic priorities according to the variable which is currently 'in crisis'. It then investigates whether this perception is accurate, and finds broadly in the affirmative in spite of a growing salience of inflation over time, on the strength of Gallup poll data from 1953-75. The finding of previous studies that government popularity declines cyclically between elections is interpreted in terms of its greater discretion in matters of economic (and other) policy variables in the mid-term, and the hypothesis is put forward that a more economically informed electorate might ipso facto have less unstable preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the performance of the Indian Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme from 1985 to 1993 in relation to a critical literature which argues that comprehensive agricultural insurance is subject to insuperable moral-hazard obstacles. History of the insurance scheme; Theoretical framework; Elements of cost and benefit.

Evaluates the program aid of World Bank in the form of Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) with emphasis on the distinction between the influence of program finance and the influence of the policy conditions attached to this finance. Objectives of program lending; Application of aggregative with and without method to the evaluation of World Bank SALs; Results of regression analysis of all SAL countries.

Investigates the achievement and contradiction of agrarian reforms in the Catilluc valley in Peru. Description of the Catilluc valley; Structure of cash revenue in the valley; Determinants of inequality.

Reports on a research project which estimated the impact of microfinance institutions in seven developing countries on poverty and other target variables. Relation between this impact and the institutions' design features; Enthusiasm generated by microenterprise finance; Impact of lending on a recipient's household in relation to the recipient's income and asset position; Implications for policy and institutional design.

Demonstrates the impact of increases in financial flows from North to South on economic welfare in both North and South, using a simple North-South economic model. Influence of the level of aid effectiveness on the manner in which increases are financed; Factors contributing to the decision of the World back to move away from project lending to policy lending.

Presents a study issued by the World Bank on structural adjustment arguing that orthodox macroeconomic management represents the road to economic recovery for the sub-Saharan countries. Bank policy shifts from structural adjusment to stabilization; Statistical evidence neither convincing nor conisitent; Alternative approach proposed and tested.

Discusses the 1989 debate between the World Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa over the economic adjustment of Africa. Background of the disagreements; Analysis of growth, investment and trade; Food security and social indicators; Statistics as of 1991; Lack of proof an overall recovery; Implications on policy.

Evaluates several articles on the economics of British colonialism. Contention regarding the acquisition of colonies as the consequence of the development of capitalism; Political motives behind British colonial expansion; Economic factors in British annexation; Implications of British dependence on its colonies for raw materials and markets; Link between commercial interest and British colonial policy.

It has become common to try and increase the effectiveness of microfinance programmes by adding supplementary services to the financial product. However, the added value accruing from this ‘credit-plus’ approach has been little analysed. We hypothesise that the extent of added value from credit-plus depends on the ability of the credit supplier to cultivate trust, or social capital, amongst clients. Applying difference-in-difference estimation, we exploit a natural experiment of two ‘credit-plus’ programmes in Mexico. The findings suggest that credit-plus is not universally effective, but that it is at its most effective, especially with low-income groups, where ‘bonding’ (within-group) social capital exists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: We examine the impact of Micro Health Insurance placement on health awareness, healthcare utilization, and health status of microcredit members in rural Bangladesh, using data from 329 households in the operating areas of Grameen Bank. The results are based on econometric analysis conditioned on placement of the scheme and show that placement has a positive association with all of the outcomes. The results are statistically significant for health awareness and healthcare utilization, but not for health status and these findings are potentially important for the expansion and replication of Micro Health Insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the hypothesis that aid contributes to increasing aggregate welfare, measured by infant mortality and the Human Development Index (HDI), in recipient countries. Estimation is based on data for 104 countries over the period 1980-2000, and for sub samples of low-income and middle-income countries. Fixed effect estimates provide robust evidence that aid is associated with improved values of the welfare indicators, and this effect appears to be greater in low-income countries. Aid appears to increase welfare either directly or through the effect on growth, and there is no evidence that aid operates through public spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Evidence is mounting that the pattern of overseas aid through time, of which its volatility (or instability) is a key dimension, has an important influence on its effectiveness. The three papers in this Special Section examine the extent of this influence, and how it may be possible to control volatility in the interests of more effective aid. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]