Although growth has improved substantially in most African countries in recent years, poverty across the continent has fallen very little in the aggregate. There have been strong poverty reduction performances in some countries, but others exhibit higher poverty rates now than in 1990 despite...

Growth improved substantially in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since 1990, but poverty in SSA as a whole has fallen by about a third, compared to by half or more in other developing regions. While some countries have had little or no success in reducing poverty, many have had...

This paper considers how the conditionality inherent in HIPC debt relief should be constituted to promote pro-poor policies. There are two dimensions to this. First, the extent to which the policies proposed are pro-poor. Second, the potential for releasing resources for pro-poor expenditures....

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the relationships between income inequality and growth, trade policy and growth, and growth and poverty. We contribute to this literature by exploring the relationships between inequality, trade liberalisation, growth and poverty in a sample of...

This paper evaluates the impact on developing countries of the prohibition of trade related investment measures ( TRIMs). The economic impact of implementing the TRIMs Agreement in GATT 1994, and more generally of liberalising investment measures, is likely to be negative and significant for...

Two findings have been common in the literature on the impact of foreign aid on public sector fiscal behaviour in developing countries. The first is that aid "sticks" to higher levels of recipient government expenditure, with aggregate expenditure often rising by more than the value of the aid...

Our objective is to test the hypothesis that ai d can improve the welfare of the poor. Part of this effect is direct, if aid is targeted on the poor, and part is indirect, via the transmission channel of aid-financed public spending on social services - sanitation, education and health. This...