Nigeria is currently classified by the World Bank as a "blend" country, making it the poorest country in the world that does not have "IDA-only" status. This paper uses the World Bank's own IDA eligibility criteria to assess whether Nigeria has a case for reclassification. Given that the country...

The Commitment to Development Index of the Center for Global Development rates 21 rich countries on the "development-friendliness" of their policies. It is revised and updated annually. In the 2004 edition, the component on foreign assistance combines quantitative and qualitative measures of...

The world has increasingly recognized that private capital has a vital role to play in economic development. African countries have moved to liberalize the investment environment, yet have not received much FDI. At least part of this poor performance is because of lingering skepticism toward...

"Pro-poor growth" is the new mantra of the development community. Most donor agencies have active research programs underway to understand the pro-poor process, and the World Bank, with British, French and German bilateral support, is already studying how to operationalize the concept (USAID, 2004;...

The index of trade policy developed in this study is designed to synthesize the state of developing country access to import markets in each of the major industrial country areas. The first section presents the theoretical considerations involved in constructing the index, and weighs the pros...

The cross-country literature on foreign aid effectiveness has relied on the use of instruments to distinguish causality from mere correlation. This paper uses simple non-instrumental techniques in the spirit of Granger to demonstrate that the main aid-growth connection is a negative causal...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

A powerful historical pathway of structural transformation is experienced by all successful developing countries, and this Working Paper presents the results of new empirical analysis of the process. Making sure the poor are connected to both the structural transformation and to the policy...

Two aspects of global imbalances - undervalued exchange rates and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) - require a multilateral response. For reasons of inadequate leverage and eroding legitimacy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not been effective in dealing with undervalued exchange rates....

After a half century of multilateral bargaining to reduce trade barriers, agriculture stands out for the degree of protection and government support that it still enjoys in most rich countries. This makes agricultural protection a natural focus of the current Doha Round of trade negotiations: in...