This paper puts sub-Saharan Africa's economic development into perspective. While much did not go as hoped for at independence, much of the region has been on a more promising development trajectory since the mid-1990s, as we illustrate using growth, poverty, and human development indicators. We...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to accelerate poverty reduction in developing countries. The diagnostic pro-poor growth toolbox has so far focused on the income dimension as well as key non-income achievements in education and health. This article...

The role of agriculture in development remains much debated. This paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty, as opposed to growth alone. The contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth performance, its indirect impact on growth in other...

This paper looks at the spillover effects of grants under the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) on human capital investments in conflict-affected Northern Uganda. The YOP grant was primarily aimed at providing start-up money to groups of underemployed young people, and in practice worked...

Development economists have considered physical infrastructure to be a precondition for industrialization and economic development. Yet, two issues remain to be addressed in the literature. First, while proper identification of the causal effectiveness of infrastructure in reducing poverty is...

Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes are widespread in developing countries. We focus on one such administrative failure - the persistent delay in paying beneficiaries on time in India’s iconic anti-poverty programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Using a...

Pro Poor Growth has become a central concern to achieve sustainable poverty reduction in developing countries. Despite being widely used, the term is not well-defined nor has there been a clear policy document that would summarize the determinants and policy implications of pro poor growth. This...

This study takes as its starting point what Gunnar Myrdal had to say about Viet Nam in the context of his seminal work, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968. Myrdal pointed to the decisive nature of the Vietnamese people; and subsequent developments, which are...

This paper focuses on the role of institutions in poverty alleviation, where both poverty and institutions are interpreted broadly. The broadening of the poverty notion is important at least from the policy perspective. Even if one were convinced that higher growth would reduce income poverty to...

Controversy over the aggregate impact of foreign aid has focused on reduced form estimates of the aid-growth link. The causal chain, through which aid affects developmental outcomes including growth, has received much less attention. We address this gap by: (i) specifying a structural model of...