This article investigates how financial development helps to reduce poverty directly through a distributional effect, beyond its indirect effect through economic growth. The results obtained with data for a sample of developing countries from 1966 through 2000 suggest that the poor benefit from...

Two visions of aid effectiveness and allocation are compared. The first, corresponding to the new aid paradigm, argues that aid is only effective if domestic policies are appropriate. The second, in contrast, argues that aid effectiveness depends on the external and climatic environment: the...

Macro vulnerability of the small island developing states (SIDS) as well as of least developed countries (LDCs) has been an increasing concern for the international community. This has led to the design of an economic vulnerability index (EVI) to assess the structural economic vulnerability...