This paper offers an overview of the strengths and limitations in current empirical research on the measurement of state capacity. The paper also surveys the fast emerging literature on the determinants and effects of state capacity. We argue that existing measures on governance quality used in...

The increasing realisation that governance quality is a fundamental element of long-run development has led to its consideration as a desirable development goal in its own right. To contribute to such a process, this article provides a framework to set, measure and monitor governance goals in...

Through an analysis of Ghana's HIPC Fund, which was established as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) process, this paper shows how aid-financed efforts to reduce regional inequality in Ghana have failed. Dominant political elites agreed to policies of regional inequality...

Although politics has become central to international development assistance, the use of political economy analysis (PEA) as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains an aspiring epistemic agenda. Even though virtually all aid donors have some personnel working on the development and...

This paper examines the take up of Political Economic Analysis (PEA) tools and approaches by development agencies. It charts the emergence of PEA, reviews the embryonic literature on this phenomenon and asks whether this approach assists donors and development agencies to comprehend politics and...

We examine the political economy causes of India's growth acceleration in the early 1990s, the periods of high growth in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the subsequent slowdown since 2011, drawing from the ESID conceptual framework (Pritchett and Werker 2013) and periodisation of growth episodes...

This paper is an assessment of what we know about the political determinants of economic growth. It begins by setting out the stylized facts of economic growth. The paper suggests that there is a need to shift away from much of the previous literature's emphasis on the determinants of long-run...

We propose and implement a new technique for measuring the total magnitude of a growth episode: the change in output per capita resulting from one structural break in the trend growth of output (acceleration or deceleration) to the next. The magnitude of the gain or loss from a growth episode...

While several studies have focused on the effect of natural resources on economic development, less attention has been paid to their effects on other development outcomes. We contribute to this literature by studying the impact of resource rents on fiscal capacity, i.e., the ability of states to...