International development agencies are increasingly looking to business as a partner in achieving development outcomes. Engaging business in development has become a central plank of many countries’ aid policies. However, the potential of public-private partnerships for development is still...

Steve Pollard, known in the Pacific as a government employee, researcher, consultant, and donor staffer, recently retired from the ADB. He has almost 30 years' experience working toward the interests of better policy for better livelihoods in the Pacific, almost 40 years' experience in...

This is an edited transcript of the lecture given by The Honorable Emilia Pires, Timor-Leste Finance Minister and g7+ Chair, for the inaugural Harold Mitchell Development Policy Lecture at the Australian National University on 22 November 2012. In her lecture and subsequent Q&A, Ms Pires...

Civilian suffering from civil war extends well after the ceasefire. Reliable ways to measure perceived safety are needed in post-conflict settings, since the extent to which safety improves may be crucial in maintaining the peace. Yet obtaining truthful reports from respondents in these settings...

The Australian Government introduced the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme (PSWPS) in 2008 to allow Pacific Islanders to fill seasonal labour shortages in the horticulture industry, and announced in December 2011 that the scheme would be made permanent. Take-up of the scheme is increasing but...

On 9 September 2007, Australian Ministers and the Indonesian President announced a $100 million Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP). This would involve protecting 70,000 hectares of peat forests, re-flooding 200,000 hectares of dried peatland, and planting 100 million trees in...

An important public policy question is whether improved targeting of public spending will necessarily result in more or more cost-effective poverty reduction. In an important and influential study, Ravallion (2009) shows that targeting measures perform poorly as indicators of the poverty impact...

Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps) are an approach to aid management that aim to support recipient government leadership. Health aid has grown rapidly in the past 20 years and in this time SWAps have become an important health aid delivery approach. However, the empirical evidence is that the...

This paper offers a fresh insight into the performance and reform opportunities of the formal health system of Papua New Guinea. A central tenant of this paper is that the historically imposed and continuing top-down nature of the formal health system in PNG is not capitalizing on potentially...

Business is increasingly seen by international aid agencies as a partner in development. Recommendation 21 of the recent Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness for the Australian Government reflects this: ‘The power of business should be harnessed and business innovation should be encouraged,...