the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries abstract the introduction of the washington consensus involved not simply a swing from state led to market oriented policies but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment the main challenge to this approach is a latent southern consensus which is apparent in the convergence between east asian developmentalism and latin american neostructuralism the demise of the washington consensus is inevitable because its methodology and ideology are in contradiction

tracking poverty over time in the absence of comparable consumption data following the endorsement by the international community of the millennium development goals mdg there has been an increasing demand for practical methods for steadily tracking poverty an economically intuitive and inexpensive methodology is explored for doing so in the absence of regular comparable data on household consumption the minimum data requirements for this methodology are the availability of a household budget survey and a series of surveys with a comparable set of asset data also contained in the budget survey this method is illustrated using a series of demographic and health surveys for kenya

do corrupt governments receive less foreign aid critics of foreign aid programs argue that these funds often support corrupt governments and inefficient bureaucracies supporters argue that foreign aid can be used to reward good governments this paper documents that there is no evidence that less corrupt governments receive more foreign aid on the contrary according to some measures of corruption more corrupt governments receive more aid also we could not find any evidence that an increase in foreign aid reduces corruption in summary the answer to the question posed in the title is no

institutional solutions to the asymmetric information problem in health and development services for the poor summary the world s poorest pay for professional services and thus are in a market whether the services are provided in the public or private sectors the associated problems of unequal information are particularly acute in undergoverned countries where state regulation is weak we systematically review the evidence on solutions to these problems in a variety of professions payments by clients are more likely to have a positive effect on quality if they are made through locally managed organizations rather than directly to individual practitioners particularly if those organizations have an institutionalized history of other regarding values and incorporate client participation

renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation towards a relational understanding of technical assistance abstract recent decades have witnessed a surge in international programmes established to assist the adoption of renewable energy technologies rets in low and lower middle income countries so far such programmes have yielded mixed success while partnerships between international national and local organisations have become the pre eminent model for ret programmes we know relatively little about their contribution this article traces the role of renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation shifting the analytical emphasis from barriers and drivers to key actors and their relationships it presents a relational approach for the analysis of development assistance for renewable energy drawing on theories concerning the role of strong and weak ties in inter organisational networks through an analysis of seven empirical cases from central america the article provides insights into how different forms of inter organisational relationships can facilitate implementation of ret programmes but do not necessarily enhance the capacities of local organisations in a way to support a more sustainable adoption of rets on the basis of this analysis theoretical and policy implications are given concerning the potential of relational approaches for researching technology diffusion processes and the role of strong and weak ties for the success or failure of renewable energy partnerships

is corporate aid targeted to poor and deserving countries a case study of nestle s aid allocation summary empirical evidence on the targeting of private aid is largely lacking even though corporate donors are an increasingly important source of aid we contribute to closing this gap by performing a case study of nestle the allocation of nestle s aid is compared to that of swiss oda and ngo aid testing for both altruistic and selfish aid motivations we conclude that nestle s aid clearly lacks focus in terms of targeting poor countries which appears to be the downside of the strong link between commercial presence and aid moreover according to our tobit estimations nestle grants more aid to recipient countries with stronger democratic but also more corrupt institutions

beauty and the labor market the authors examine the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers ratings of respondents physical appearance plain people earn less than average looking people who earn less than the good looking the plainness penalty is 5 to 10 percent slightly larger than the beauty premium effects for men are at least as great as for women unattractive women have lower labor force participation rates and marry men with less human capital better looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive but the impact of individuals looks is mostly independent of occupation suggesting the existence of pure employer discrimination copyright 1994 by american economic association

the impact of obesity on wages abstract previous studies of the relationship between body weight and wages have found mixed results this paper uses a larger data set and several regres sion strategies in an attempt to generate more consistent estimates of the effect of weight on wages differences across gender race and ethnicity are explored this paperjnds that weight lowers wages for white females ols esti mates indicate that a difference in weight of two standard deviations roughly 65 pounds is associated with a difference in wages of 9 percent in absolute value this is equivalent to the wage effect of roughly one and a half years of education or three years of work experience negative cor relations between weight and wages observed for other gender ethnic groups appear to be due to unobserved heterogeneity i introduction several previous studies have found among females a negative cor relation between body weight and wages there exist three broad categories of ex planations for this finding the first explanation is that obesity lowers wages for example by lowering productivity or because of workplace discrimination the sec ond is that low wages cause obesity this would be true if poorer people consume

poverty alleviation as business strategy evaluating commitments of frontrunner multinational corporations summary in the debate on how to combat poverty the positive role of mncs is frequently mentioned nowadays although doubts and criticism remain facing this societal debate mncs feel the pressure to formulate a position this paper analyzes mncs policies on their poverty alleviating potential frontrunner mncs turn out not to be very outspoken especially not on those issues that have the largest potential to help alleviate poverty placed in the context of other mncs behavior a sector coordinated morality seems important which means that a meso approach to poverty alleviation needs to complement the current global macro and individual company micro focus

a step back as donors shift institution building from the public to the private sector abstract frustrated with public sectors in developing countries donors have shifted support to nonprofit nongovernmental organizations this paper questions the preferability of the nonprofit or public sector from the donor and host country perspectives case study experience from agriculture and natural resource institutions in ecuador and the dominican republic is presented to expand upon current thinking about the role of the nonprofit sector nonprofits are found to possess substantially increased flexibility for donor purposes and avoid many of the pitfalls of the political process they are however subject to free rider problems and bear no responsibility to the general public

measuring aggregate welfare in developing countries how well do national accounts and surveys agree in a data set for developing and transition economies the author finds that private consumption per capita based on national accounts deviates on average from mean household income or expenditure based on national sample surveys growth rates also differ systematically so that the ratio of the survey mean to the national accounts mean tends to fall over time but there are revealing exceptions to these general findings the aggregate difference in the levels is due more to income surveys than to expenditure surveys and there are strong regional effects for example the severe data problems in the transition economies of eastern europe and central asia means that there is negligible correlation in that region between growth rates from national accounts and those from household surveys

are workers paid their marginal products status is like coase s social costs a reciprocal phenomenon given that one person s gain in status can occur only at the expense of a loss in status for others and that workers are free to choose their coworkers it follows that the competitive wage structure within a firm must be one in which individual wage differences understate individual differences in marginal products the purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of empirical evidence that relates to this proposition about the firm s internal wage structure the paper is organized as follows section i briefly summarizes the theoretical considerations that govern competitive wage determination when status matters to people and firms are viewed as voluntary associations of workers section ii then confronts the predictions of section i by examining pay and productivity schedules for a group of sales occupations for which these schedules are relatively easily observed section ii also examines the relationship between wages and productivity for a sample of university professors an occupation in which individual productivity differences are for a variety of obvious reasons relatively more difficult to measure all of the evidence examined is consistent with the hypothesis that within firms wage rates vary substantially less than do individual productivity values section iii discusses additional observations and evidence that bear on this same hypothesis it suggests that the implicit market for status may strongly influence the ways in which firms are organized to carry out the tasks they perform section iv concludes by considering the claim that egalitarian internal wage structures arise because of equity considerations it argues that the concept of equity appears very closely linked to the concept of status and suggests a strategy for assigning monetaty value to the equity considerations that so often dominate public policy decisions

convergence or convenience international conservation ngos and development assistance in tanzania abstract international conservation ngos and development agencies have historically operated independently of one another recently their agendas have converged to consider both environmental and human needs with an emerging focus on private sector involvement in conservation new funding from international finance institutions has become available for ngo initiatives and today there is little difference between the environmental strategies of international development agencies and those of the major conservation ngos operating in tanzania while this is due in part to independent shifts in both sectors ngos may also be serving to carry out and legitimate the neoliberal policies of development institutions

civil society collaboration with business bringing empowerment back in abstract strategic partnerships between civil society organizations csos and businesses are widely promoted as important new strategies to encourage corporate citizenship in the global south this study tested these claims by examining 10 cases of collaboration between csos and businesses in brazil india and south africa findings suggest a sobering view of the benefits that civil society organizations and their constituencies can expect from collaboration development impacts may be more likely in sectors clearly linked to business interests such as education and employment generation goals of organizational capacity building are more likely to be satisfied than those of citizen empowerment csos and businesses reap mutual benefits from collaboration but csos tend to shoulder more of the costs businesses can dominate collaborative decision making with negative results for sustainability the paper offers a number of propositions to guide further research and inform collaborative practice empowered civil society collaboration with business is suggested as a more appropriate model than strategic partnership for csos pursuing sustainable development

mortality reductions educational attainment and fertility choice this paper develops a model where reductions in mortality are the main force behind economic development the model generates a pattern of changes similar to the demographic transition where gains in life expectancy at birth are followed by reductions in fertility and increases in the rate of human capital accumulation the onset of the transition is characterized by a critical level of life expectancy at birth which marks the movement of the economy from a malthusian equilibrium to an equilibrium with investments in human capital and the possibility of long run growth

firm level contracting and the structure of wages in spain in many european countries sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry employers and employees can also negotiate firm specific contracts the authors of this paper use a large matched employer employee data set from a 1995 survey in spain to study the effects of firm level contracting on the structure of wages they estimate a series of wage determination models including specifications that control for individual characteristics coworker characteristics the bargaining status of the workplace and the probability that the workplace was covered by a firm level contract they find that firm level contracting was associated with a 5 10 wage premium with larger premiums for more highly paid workers although they cannot decisively test between alternative explanations for the firm level contracting premium they find that workers with firm specific contracts had substantially longer job tenure than other workers suggesting that the premium was at least

economic status and health in childhood the origins of the gradient the well known positive association between health and income in adulthood has antecedents in childhood not only is children s health positively related to household income but the relationship between household income and children s health becomes more pronounced as children age part of the relationship can be explained by the arrival and impact of chronic conditions children from lower income households with chronic conditions have worse health than do those from higher income households the adverse health effects of lower income accumulate over children s lives part of the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status may work through the impact of parents income on children s health

gluttony and sloth calories labour market activity and the rise of obesity the rise in obesity has largely been attributed to an increase in calorie consumption we show that official government household survey data indicate that levels of calorie consumption have declined in england between 1980 and 2013 while there has been an increase in calories from food eaten out at restaurants fast food soft drinks and confectionery overall there has been a decrease in total calories purchased households have shifted towards more expensive calories both by substituting away from home production towards market production and substituting towards higher quality foods we show that the decline in calories can be partially but not entirely rationalized with weight gain by a decline in the strenuousness of work and daily life jel d12 i12 i18

measuring poverty in a growing world or measuring growth in a poor world the extent to which growth reduces global poverty has been disputed for 30 years although there are better data than ever before controversies are not resolved a major problem is that consumption measured from household surveys which is used to measure poverty grows less rapidly than consumption measured in national accounts in the world as a whole and in large countries particularly india china and the united states in consequence measured poverty has fallen less rapidly than appears warranted by measured growth in poor countries one plausible cause is that richer households are less likely to participate in surveys but growth in the national accounts is also upward biased and consumption in the national accounts contains large and rapidly growing items that are not consumed by the poor and not included in surveys so it is possible for consumption of the poor to grow less rapidly than national consumption without any increase in measured inequality current statistical procedures in poor

the rise of obesity in europe an economic perspective obesity in europe is rising this paper investigates the economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity we present new empirical evidence showing that family background is related to obesity among young european adults this evidence provides a strong basis for intervention on equity grounds particularly targeted towards children the case for intervention on efficiency grounds is less clear cut and in most cases the evidence is relatively weak we find insufficient evidence that information deficiencies are important as the majority of europeans appear to be aware of the bad consequences of obesity on health we also find that the potential health insurance externality non obese effectively subsidizing obese individuals is small in support of policy intervention we show that there are product and labour market imperfections obese employees earn less than the non obese we also find that there is a remarkably high proportion of individuals with self control problems who fail to stick to their self declared weight related plans regulations that affect fast food advertisements and the location and access to fast food vending machines and establishments may help these individuals in controlling their weight giorgio brunello pierre carl michaud and anna sanz de galdeano

uneasy alliances lessons learned from partnerships between businesses and ngos in the context of csr interest in corporate social responsibility csr has proliferated in academic and business circles alike in the context of csr the spotlight has traditionally focused on the role of the private sector particularly in view of its wealth and global reach other actors have recently begun to assume more visible roles in the context of csr including non governmental organizations ngos which have acquired increasing prominence on the socio economic landscape this article examines five partnerships between businesses and ngos in a developing country context that fall in the realm of csr the article starts with a literature review delineating foundational underpinnings that have to be carefully designed and crafted to promote the success of collaborative ventures an empirical study of five selected partnerships between businesses and ngos in lebanon is then presented allowing to derive interesting insights into types of existing alliances their relational characteristics as well as salient factors considered most determinant of success or failure in this regard

how to deliver foreign aid the case of projects governed by the spanish international agency summary international agencies use two alternative modes of governance to deliver international aid projects under bilateral agreements with recipient governments in house or through incumbent ngos through the lenses of institutional and transaction cost economics this article examines 95 international aid projects delivered in morocco and ecuador by the spanish international agency finding that those projects delivered in house present different features than those projects outsourced through incumbent ngos specifically international aid projects delivered in house involve important investments in specific assets are much more complex and can turn the public agency into a hostage of its own disbursement

socioeconomic status and child health why is the relationship stronger for older children case lubotsky and paxson 2001 show that the well known relationship between socio economic status ses and health exists in childhood and grows more pronounced with age however in cross sectional data it is difficult to distinguish between two possible explanations the first is that low ses children are less able to respond to a given health shock the second is that low ses children experience more shocks we show using panel data on canadian children that 1 the gradient we estimate in the cross section is very similar to that estimated previously using u s children 2 both high and low ses children recover from past health shocks to about the same degree and 3 that the relationship between ses and health grows stronger over time mainly because low ses children receive more negative health shocks in addition we examine the effect of health shocks on math and reading scores we find that health shocks affect test scores and future health in very similar ways our results suggest that public policy aimed at reducing ses related health differentials in children should focus on reducing the incidence of health shocks as well as on reducing disparities in access to palliative care

aid allocation by german ngos does the degree of official financing matter using a new data set for 41 german non governmental organisations ngos we analyse the allocation of ngo aid across recipient countries in a tobit regression framework by identifying for each ngo the degree of official financing we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of ngo aid it turns out that german ngos are more active in poorer countries while they do not complement official aid by working under difficult local conditions beyond a certain threshold rising financial dependence weakens their poverty orientation and provides an incentive to engage in easier environments in addition we find that the ngos follow the state as well as ngo peers when allocating aid this herding behaviour is however hardly affected by the degree of official financing

the causal effect of education on body mass evidence from europe we adopt a multi country setup to show that years of schooling have a causal protective effect on the body mass index of females living in nine european countries no such effect is found for males the protective effect for european females is not negligible but is smaller than one recently found for the united states and stronger among overweight females we discuss possible mechanisms justifying both the protective role of education and the gender difference in this role we argue that the effects of additional schooling on income the probability of employment and the frequency of vigorous physical activities both on and off the job may help explain our results

can the world cut poverty in half how policy reform and effective aid can meet international development goals abstract poverty in the developing world will decline by about one half by 2015 if the trends of the 1990s persist most of this poverty reduction will occur in asia however while poverty will decline only slightly in africa effective aid could make a contribution to greater poverty reduction in lagging regions even more potent would be significant policy reform in these countries we develop a model of efficient aid in which flows respond to policy improvements that create a better environment for poverty reduction and effective aid we investigate scenarios of policy reform and efficient aid that point the way to how the world can cut poverty in half in every major region

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

aid policies and growth the authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid economic policies and growth of per capita gdp in panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four year periods 1970 93 they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus inflation and trade openness they construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid they have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies they find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies in the presence of poor policies aid has no positive effect on growth this result is robust in a variety of specifications which include or exclude middle income countries include or exclude outliers and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous they examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies either for good or for ill they estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors pursuit of their own strategic interests in a counterfactual they reallocate aid reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries growth rates

fast food restaurant advertising on television and its influence on childhood obesity childhood obesity is an escalating problem around the world that is especially detrimental as its effects carry on into adulthood to estimate the effects of television fast food restaurant advertising on children and adolescents with respect to being overweight this paper employs the 1979 child young adult national longitudinal survey of youth and the 1997 national longitudinal survey of youth to estimate the effects of television fast food restaurant advertising on children and adolescents with respect to being overweight a ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3 11 in a fixed population by 18 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12 18 by 14 percent the elimination of the tax deductibility of this type of advertising would produce smaller declines of between 5 and 7 percent in these outcomes but would impose lower costs on children and adults who consume fast food in moderation because positive information about restaurants that supply this type of food would not be completely banned from television

ngo performance what breeds success new evidence from south asia abstract what is the best way for nongovernment organisations ngos to make a lasting impact on poverty this paper summarizes the findings of recent research into the impact sustainability and cost effectiveness of two ngos in india and two projects implemented by save the children fund uk in bangladesh the factors determining performance are explored through the interaction of organizational decisions with the external context although these interactions are complex and dynamic some clear conclusions emerge making a difference to livelihoods and capacities among poor people depends on ngo successes in fostering autonomous grassroots institutions and linking them with markets and political structures at higher levels these conclusions question the current predilection among donor agencies to fund large scale ngo service delivery

child health and conflict in cote d ivoire we examine the impact of the 2002 07 civil conflict in cote d ivoire on children s health status measured by height for age we use pre and post war survey data coupled with information on the location of violent incidents to capture exposure to the conflict of children born during 1997 2007 our results indicate that children from regions more affected by the conflict suffered significant health setbacks compared with children from less affected regions further household level victimization such as war related economic stress health stress and displacement has a large and negative effect on child health in conflict affected regions

correcting for sampling bias in the measurement of welfare and poverty in the cote d ivoire living standards survey the sampling aspects of a household data set are important to analysts the early years of the cote d ivoire standards survey cilss had a sampling bias which seriously affected estimates of population statistics such as household size the bias arose from sampling procedures that overrepresented larger dwellings assuming that samples drawn in later years were unbiased a correction procedure is applied that uses weights based on household size results from the weighted data are then compared with the unweighted findings to assess the seriousness of the bias estimates of household expenditure per capita in the early years of the survey are found to be significantly underestimated resulting in an overestimation of poverty the sampling bias also resulted in an underestimation of the upward trend in poverty during 1985 88 the cilss has been a popular and fruitful data set for policy analysis these findings however cast doubt on the robustness of earlier work thus the effort to trace sampling information is particularly worthwhile for policy oriented applied research

why is income inequality so low in china compared to other countries the effect of household survey methods many studies suggest that income inequality in china is comparatively low but if income inequality in urban china was measured using monthly income as in many other countries it would be from 17 to 69 higher depending on the inequality measure used 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

targeting aid to the needy and deserving nothing but promises by reallocating aid to where it is needed most and where a productive use is most likely donors could help alleviate poverty in developing countries the rhetoric of donors suggests that this insight has increasingly shaped the allocation of aid we assess the poverty and policy orientation of bilateral and multilateral aid in different ways in addition to presenting stylised facts based on bivariate correlations we apply a tobit model that captures both altruistic and selfish donor motives we find little evidence supporting the view that the targeting of aid has improved significantly most donors provide higher aid to relatively poor countries but so far the fight against poverty has not resulted in a stronger focus on needy recipients with favourable local conditions the estimation results reveal that the policy orientation of aid critically depends on how local conditions are measured in general however donors appear to be less policy oriented than poverty oriented the response of donors to changing institutional and policy conditions in recipient countries turns out to be fairly weak we reject the proposition that multilateral aid is clearly superior to bilateral aid in terms of rewarding poor countries with better policies and institutions

aid allocation through various official and private channels need merit and self interest as motives of german donors summary the previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country we estimate tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need merit and self interest of donors for various channels of official and private german aid across a large sample of recipient countries in 2005 07 our findings underscore the need for a disaggregated analysis of aid allocation aid channels differ significantly in the extent to which need and merit are taken into account yet the german case does not reveal unambiguously superior aid channels

aid delivery through non governmental organisations does the aid channel matter for the targeting of swedish aid this paper analyses whether aid channelled through non governmental organisations ngos is less affected by selfish donor motivations and better targeted to needy recipient countries than aid distributed by state agencies we employ tobit and probit models and make use of an exceptionally detailed database that allows an assessment of the allocation of swedish aid channelled through ngos in comparison to the allocation of swedish official aid our analysis provides mixed results on the one hand ngos appear to be altruistic as far as available indicators on political and commercial motivations of aid can tell on the other hand needs based targeting of aid by ngos turns out to be surprisingly weak gdp per capita of recipient countries shapes the allocation of official aid but not that of aid channelled through ngos the headcount of absolute poverty has a significantly positive effect on aid allocation but its impact is not particularly strong when ngos are involved overall the swedish case supports the sceptical view that ngos are not necessarily superior donors compared to state aid agencies

review 1 obesity unhappiness and the challenge of affluence theory and evidence is affluence a good thing the book the challenge of affluence by avner offer 2006 argues that economic prosperity weakens self control and undermines human well being consistent with a pessimistic view we show that psychological distress has been rising through time in modern great britain taking over eating as an example our data reveal that half the british population view themselves as overweight and that happiness and mental health are worse among fatter people in britain and germany comparisons also matter we discuss problems of inference and argue that longitudinal data are needed we suggest a theory of obesity imitation where utility depends on relative weight copyright 2007 the author s journal compilation royal economic society 2007

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

keeping a low profile what determines the allocation of aid by non governmental organizations ngos play an important role in international development cooperation but the allocation of ngo aid has rarely been mapped let alone explained based on a representative dataset for 61 important ngos from various oecd countries we analyze the targeting of ngo aid across a large number of recipient countries by jointly considering major determinants of ngo aid in a multivariate regression framework while our results show that ngos are more active in the neediest countries we reject the hypothesis that ngos complement official aid through engaging in so called difficult institutional environments rather they tend to replicate the location choices of official backdonors moreover ngos follow other ngos so that aid gets clustered finally ngos select recipient countries with common traits related to religion or colonial history taken together our findings suggest that ngos keep a low profile rather than distinguishing themselves from other donors and trying to excel under risky conditions

the welfare effects of health based food tax policy this paper examines the effects of health oriented food tax reforms on the distribution of tax payments food demand and health outcomes we offer an illustration of how one can take into account the uncertainty related to both demand estimation and health estimates and to produce confidence intervals for the overall health effects instead of only point estimates taxation of sugar could lead to a statistically significant reduction in both the incidence of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease the health effects appear to be most pronounced for low income individuals and the reforms may therefore reduce health inequality this effect undermines the traditional regressivity argument against the heavy taxation of unhealthy food

the effect of health on economic growth a production function approach abstract we estimate a production function model of aggregate economic growth including two variables that microeconomists have identified as fundamental components of human capital work experience and health our main result is that good health has a positive sizable and statistically significant effect on aggregate output even when we control for experience of the workforce we argue that the life expectancy effect in growth regressions appears to be a real labor productivity effect and is not the result of life expectancy acting as a proxy for worker experience

participation social capital and intersectoral problem solving african and asian cases abstract cooperation in policy program implementation between state and nongovernmental actors can sometimes solve intractable development problems but such cooperation must span gaps in culture power resources and perspective this article provides a comparative analysis of 13 cases of intersectoral cooperation among public agencies nongovernmental organizations grassroots groups and international donors the analysis reveals two successful implementation patterns nongovernment organization ngo mediated cooperation and grassroots centered cooperation different forms of social capital are central to the two patterns indigenous ngos with credibility across sectors are critical to the former while grassroots organizations are vital to the latter participatory decision making and mutual influence are essential to grassroots centered cooperation but less so for ngo mediated collaboration

corporations and ngos when accountability leads to co optation interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility csr in this article we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and ngos can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co optation greater scrutiny of ngo spending driven by self appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of csr advanced by corporate actors weaken the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector to counter this trend we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of csr and should actively encourage ngos to strengthen downward accountability mechanisms even if this creates more tensions in corporate ngo partnerships rather than seeing ngos as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place corporations should actively support ngo independence and critical capacity

the effects of health wealth and wages on labour supply and retirement behaviour this paper estimates a life cycle model of labour supply retirement and savings behaviour in which future health status and wages are uncertain individuals face a fixed cost of work and cannot borrow against future labour pension or social security income the method of simulated moments is used to match the life cycle profiles of labour force participation hours worked and assets that are estimated from the data to those that are generated by the model the model establishes that the tax structure of the social security system and pensions are key determinants of the high observed job exit rates at ages 62 and 65 removing the tax wedge embedded in the social security earnings test for individuals aged 65 and older would delay job exit by almost one year by contrast social security benefit levels health and borrowing constraints are less important determinants of job exit at older ages for example reducing social security benefits by 20 would cause workers to delay exit from the labour force by only three months

an innovative public private partnership new approach to development abstract this paper is focused on the development of new services by nonprofit organizations for groups of companies within a particular sector in industry it is based on a case study of an actual implementation by united nations industrial development organization unido in collaboration with a number of other organizations to upgrade the capabilities of automotive component suppliers in india to enable them to supply to world class manufacturers we draw upon the traditional literature available on new product and service development for firms introducing new products and services for maximizing profit and contrast those approaches with the approach adopted by nonprofit organizations we also carry out a comparative analysis between unido s partnership model and the traditional model to highlight the innovation aspects and advantages of the former from the developmental perspective an attempt is also made to illustrate the pre formation formation and post formation challenges faced by the new cooperation model that envisages the participation of public and private partners

the returns to education macroeconomics we offer an extensive summary and a critical discussion of the empirical literature on the impact of human capital on macro economic performance with a particular focus on uk policy we also highlight methodological issues and make recommendations for future research priorities taking the studies as a whole the evidence that human capital increases productivity is compelling though still largely divided on whether the stock of education affects the long run level or growth rate of gdp a one year increase in average education is found to raise the level of output per capita by between three and six percent according to augmented neo classical specifications while leading to an over one percentage point faster growth according to estimates from the new growth theories still over the short run planning horizon four years the empirical estimates of the change in gdp are of similar orders of magnitude in the two approaches the impact of increases at different levels of education appear to depend on the level of a country s development with tertiary education being the most important for growth in oecd countries education is found to yield additional indirect benefits to growth more preliminary evidence seems to indicate that type quality and efficiency of education matter for growth too

brothers in alms coordination between nonprofits on markets for donations mission driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes if nonprofits impose externalities on each others output this paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements using a game theoretic model of coalition formation we show that three key characteristics determine the stability of cooperation between nonprofits i the alliance formation rule ii the extent to which fundraising efforts are strategic complements substitutes and iii whether deviation from the agreements is by an individual or by a group of nonprofits we analyze how the interaction of these three features induces or not the stability of pareto optimal full coordination in fundraising

recovering comparable poverty estimates in cote d ivoire recent studies on cote d ivoire show a four fold increase in poverty rates between 1985 and 2008 however multiple revisions in the survey design questions the validity of the ivorian poverty trend in this paper we follow two simple steps to recover the comparable poverty trend first we construct a common consumption basket over time second we follow a two stage method of moments framework tarozzi 2007 to re estimate poverty headcounts on average the adjusted trend shows a two percentage point difference in poverty rates from 1985 to 2008 a number of robustness checks provide robust support to this revised poverty trend

aid allocation and poverty reduction the authors derive a poverty efficient allocation of aid and compare it with actual aid allocations they build the poverty efficient allocation in two stages first they use new world bank ratings of 20 different aspects of national policy to establish the current relationship between aid policies and growth onto that they add a mapping from growth to poverty reduction which reflects the level and distribution of income they compare the effects of using headcount and poverty gap measures of poverty they find the actual allocation of aid to be radically different from the poverty efficient allocation in the efficient allocation for a given of poverty aid tapers in with policy reform in the actual allocation aid tapers out with reform in the efficient allocation aid is targeted disproportionately to countries with severe poverty and adequate polices the type of country where 74 percent of the world s poor live in the actual allocation such countries receive a much smaller share of aid 56 percent than their share of the world s poor with the present allocation aid is effective in sustainably lifting about 30 million people a year out of absolute poverty with a poverty efficient allocation this would increase to about 80 million people even with political constraints introduced to keep allocations for india and china constant poverty reduction would increase to about 60 million reallocating aid is politically difficult but it may be considerably less difficult than quadrupling aid budgets which is what the authors estimate would be necessary to achieve the same impact on poverty reduction with existing aid allocations

the politics of government ngo relations in africa abstract non governmental organizations ngos deservedly or not have gained a reputation as the leading practitioners of rural development in africa african governments have responded ambiguously to the presence of these new agencies on the one hand valuing the economic resources ngos can raise but resisting the political pluralization implied by popular development action this article describes the growth of ngos in africa and proposes a framework for analyzing the dynamics of government ngo relations by means of examples drawn from kenya and zimbabwe among other african countries the article illustrates the strategies used by governments to exercise control and by ngos to assert autonomy an argument is made that politics rather than economics best explain the contribution of ngos to development as well as the attitude of governments toward the burgeoning voluntary sector

too close for comfort the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations abstract in promoting a new policy agenda bilateral and multilateral donor agencies are keen to finance nongovernmental organisations ngos and grassroots organizations gros on the grounds of their economic efficiency and contribution to good governance this paper reviews the impact of this trend on ngo gro programming performance legitimacy and accountability if finds that much of the case for emphasizing the role of ngos gros rests on ideological grounds rather than empirical verification in addition though the evidence is inconclusive there are signs that greater dependence on official funding may compromise ngo gro performance in key areas distort accountability and weaken legitimacy

us based ngos in international development financial and economic determinants of survival summary the accountability of non governmental organizations ngos has various dimensions from an economic perspective official financiers private donors as well as aid recipients could expect more charitable output from ngos if less efficient organizations were squeezed out of international development activities we consider administrative overheads as an important aspect of ngo efficiency our empirical analysis focuses on the effects of administrative overheads public funding and the interrelations between these two factors on the probability of market exit for almost 900 us based ngos with overseas aid activities since the mid 1980s we find that larger administrative overheads increase the probability of exit for ngos receiving any public funding however this effect weakens with increasing shares of public funding of ngos

do corporate codes of ethics reflect national character evidence from europe and the united states this paper analyses the usage and contents of corporate codes of ethics the results from a sample of 600 large european companies are contrasted with findings reported for similar u s firms the comparison reveals that significantly fewer european than u s firms adopted codes of ethics in europe the large majority of codes have been introduced only very recently and there are indications that codes made their way into europe via subsidiaries of u s firms however there are striking differences in content between u s and european codes of ethics pointing to the existence of a distinctly european approach to codifying ethics

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

more dollars than sense refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata summary in this introductory essay to the special issue we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance aiddata that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid we utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid contributors to this special issue draw on aiddata as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency new donors not previously described or analyzed aid allocation and aid effectiveness our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that aiddata and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid the database has added significant numbers of new projects dollar amounts donors and details about those projects though there is much more yet to add we worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence rectifying these problems will not be instantaneous refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work the common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail in spite of what some recent authors have claimed aid is neither a simple solution nor a sufficient cause of most problems in developing countries its motivations distribution and effects are complex and shifting capturing this complexity requires detailed data careful thought and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional causal and descriptive inferences 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

grassroots organizations and ngos in rural development opportunities with diminishing states and expanding markets abstract this article undertakes to deal systematically with nongovernment organizations ngos and grassroots organizations gros usually treated as a residual category ten levels for development decision making and action are identified in the tradition of central place theory three of these are considered local or grassroots because of their collective action possibilities then three sectors are delineated instead of the usual two ngos are part of the collective action sector which differs from the public and private sectors in theoretically consistent ways a careful distinction is made between institutions and organizations usually conflated in the literature examples of accelerated rural development through grassroots organizations and ngos are discussed form asia africa and latin america