Can export growth occur in states with weak governance and competitive clientelism? Conventional wisdom is that effective industrial policy requires a politically stable country with a centralized government. Absent these conditions, countries can pursue alternative types of industrial policies....

I use a natural experiment of oil-price-driven remittance flows to poor, non-oil-producing Muslim countries to demonstrate that remittances deteriorate the quality of governance, especially in countries with weak democratic institutions. The results indicate that a 1 standard deviation increase...

We use oil price fluctuations to test the impact of transfers from wealthy OPEC nations to their poorer Muslim allies. The instrument identifies plausibly exogenous variation in foreign aid. We investigate how aid is spent by tracking its short-run effect on aggregate demand, national accounts,...

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological,...

This paper uses Zambia as a case study to assess empirically whether political interference in a low-governance environment has diminished in the past years as expected after a semi-autonomous agency model was set up ten years ago. The road sector in Zambia has experienced some significant...

A broad consensus has emerged among practitioners and researchers that failure to build accountable and legitimate institutions is a critical risk factor associated with vicious circles of repeated violence. Despite this consensus, very few studies have tested the extent to which local...

A central policy of the Government of Indonesia's strategy for enhancing its country's economic and social development is to develop infrastructure and expand service delivery. Public procurement reform is a key component of this policy. Despite the decentralization of financial responsibility...

Negative attitudes toward groups in society are widespread and underpin systematic processes of social exclusion that marginalize people and deny them opportunities and dignity. This paper looks at the processes underlying social exclusion. It uses data covering Eastern Europe and Central Asia...

Under what conditions is service provision by donors and nonstate actors likely to undermine or strengthen citizensÕ legitimating beliefs? A new study assesses associations between donor and nonstate actor service provision and the sense of obligation that these associations produce for...