Public Administration

The use of governance indicators, as applied to developing countries, has grown spectacularly in recent years. Following the maxim that you cannot manage what you cannot measure, international investors and official development aid agencies, together...

Sovereign wealth funds have become important players in global financial markets. But their investments have repeatedly raised concerns, such as fear of industrial espionage or geopolitical threats. This paper argues that the principal motivation for...

It might seem obvious discovering an asset such as oil or copper would be wonderful news for the country making the find. Yet the opposite is often true. The windfall can bring poverty, civil strife, corruption, inequality, slower growth and...

Aid and trade policies – in OECD countries and in developing countries – might reinforce each other to promote development, or they might be substitutes: the sign of the correlation between trade and aid flows depends on the context. East Asia’s...

The Millennium Development Goals, the aid effectiveness agenda, and global interdependence have contributed to more demand and a sense of urgency for greater public awareness and learning about these promises, and challenges, in OECD countries....

A large, untapped reservoir of potential partnerships between private financial institutions (banks, asset managers, private equity firms, etc.) and aid donors remains to be fully exploited. Banks, private equity and asset management firms are...

With concern about how to finance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) widespread, recent donor pledges to raise aid volumes are welcome. However, aid alone will not suffice – bringing in new actors and sources of development finance will be...

Poor countries are and will remain for some time vulnerable to external shocks, whether to export prices or from natural disasters. The lowest-income countries have a higher incidence of shocks than other developing countries and tend to suffer...

Suppose a DAC donor earmarks $1 billion of taxpayers’ money for official development assistance (ODA). The donor may use two instruments as an outright grant or in combination with a market loan to produce a concessional loan of $2 billion with a...

Managing migration has become a priority for policy makers both in developed and developing countries; it is a difficult challenge indeed. Large immigration or emigration flows relative to domestic population’s impact on almost all aspects of an...

The tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, to which more than 225 000 deaths had been attributed by the United Nations’ six-month review in June 2005, elicited a worldwide humanitarian relief effort unprecedented in its scale;...

In November 2005, Glenys Kinnock, Co-President of the ACP EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, reported that “there are more nurses from Malawi in Manchester than in Malawi and more doctors from Ethiopia in Chicago than Ethiopia.”1 These Africans had...

. Deeply rooted social institutions – societal norms, codes of conduct, laws and tradition – cause gender discrimination. . Religion per se does not systematically define such discrimination. All dominant religions show flexibility in interpreting...

OECD countries face at least five major challenges for promoting policies that are consistent with their development goals: . ensuring security and political stability; . anticipating the impacts of their macroeconomic policies on developing-country...

. Lowering interest rates and, thus, the cost of borrowing in the rand zone (Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa) is a priority to promote investment and economic growth. . Local-currency interest rates in these countries are driven by those...

• Despite post-Monterrey donor initiatives, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are underfinanced. • The revenue potential, the additionality and the speed of availability of new finance sources, and their political feasibility, are of particular...

• Sound national systems of corporate governance are essential for all countries, including the poorest, to reap the benefits of globalisation. • “Corporate governance” comprises the institutions that govern the relationship between people who manage...

• Participation by civil society in public expenditure management promises to improve social and economic outcomes while increasing confidence in public institutions. • Participatory budgeting (PB) programmes depend on the effective engagement of...

• Early climate-related actions should be those with a high local economic and/or environmental payoff per unit of impact on greenhouse gases. • Energy, transport and natural resource management policies can often be better designed to realise...

• Regional integration in sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a vehicle for enhancing private investment through confidence building. Setting clear and easy-to-track priorities is key to achieving these policy goals. • Regional policy harmonisation or...