Africa has come a long way since the economic turmoil of the 1980s, the decade of "structural adjustment". Growth has been strong, yet poverty remains high. Underlying the shortage of good livelihoods and high social inequality is the lack of diversification in Africa's economies-in contrast to...

This paper develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resort to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 51 African countries covering the period 1980 to...

As research on the empirical link between aid and growth continues to grow, it is time to revisit the accumulated evidence on aid effectiveness. This paper does this by building on the meta-analysis in our previous work. The availability of more data enables us to conduct a sub-group analysis by...

The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature and, taking inspiration from the program...

This study provides an analysis of the aid-private capital flows-growth nexus for Ghana. It is premised on the argument that Ghana's new status as a middle income country plus the start of oil production is bound to result in a reduction in ODA inflows in the long term. However in the short to...

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in Sierra Leone, a country where an empirical econometric study on aid effectiveness is yet to exist. Using a triangulation of approaches involving the ARDL bounds test approach and the Johansen maximum likelihood approach to...

The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict. This paper briefly analyses such differences and their important...

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...

Some recent literature in the meta-analysis category where results from a range of studies are brought together throws doubt on the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses what meta-analysis has to say about the effectiveness of foreign aid in terms...

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...