This paper presents development accounting exercises in Latin America using novel databases and methods to investigate the robustness of its results. While total factor productivity initially appears to be the most important driver of output per worker gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean,...

To what extent do budgetary processes and institutions hamper infrastructural development in Africa? To answer that question, this report analyses the answers of budget officials to questionnaires administered in 22 African countries: Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Chad,...

Aid ineffectiveness, fragmentation, and volatility have already been highlighted by scholars and OECD studies. Far fewer studies have been devoted to another problem of capital flows: herding behaviour. Building upon a methodology applied to financial markets, where herding is a common feature,...

This study provides a general analysis of economic relations between Spain, as a donor of official development assistance (ODA), and Ecuador, as a partner and recipient of development aid. It seeks to assess the potential (in)coherence between Spain’s foreign economic activities and the goals...

Over the past decade we have witnessed a double convergence. Aid donors have developed a growing interest in the private sector while private banks have set about creating corporate social responsibility programs, sustainable lending and microfinance programmes. As a consequence, the dialogue...

Strong growth in China and India has led to improvements in raw-material exporting countries' terms of trade and attracted complementary finance. The long-term challenge for these countries, where institutions are often fragile, is to avoid the so-called “resource curse”. This paper aims to...

This paper presents stylised facts about development aid and capital flows to developing countries. It compares their volumes and volatilities and finds that foreign aid is not the major source of finance for these countries any more, though not for all regions. The expansion of private flows...

This paper examines the relationship between household structures, the institutions that shape them and physical and human capital accumulation using household and individual data from China, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Household structures differ greatly across countries and are very...

The report argues that aid volatility is an important source of volatility for the poorest countries. Following a method already applied by the Agence Française de Développement, the report argues that loans to LICs should incorporate a floating grace period, which the country could draw upon...

GDP per capita in Latin America has been falling behind high-income countries and other benchmarks for decades and the region’s mediocre growth performance is one of the main reasons why poverty reduction, and living standards more generally, in the region is well below that observed in peer...