The authors examine the empirical evidence in support of the poverty trap view of underdevelopment. They calibrate simple aggregate growth models in which poverty traps can arise due to either low saving or low technology at low levels of development. They then use these models to assess the...

The Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015, were a global agreement to promote human development and reduce poverty. But they did not create a legalized institutional regime, in which precise obligations would be delegated to specific actors, nor were they, in many respects,...

This paper examines historically the World Bank's twin features: lending to developing economies to achieve tangible results and advocating specific development policies. Section 1 provides some conceptual underpinnings for the view that an effective state is essential for development. It asks...

Environmental governance can be understood as 'the establishment, the reaffirmation or change of institutions (policies, laws, procedures, practices and organisations) to resolve conflicts - overt or latent - between actors over environmental resources. Environmental governance takes place at...

The world faces a multitude of global problems, on top of the need for poverty eradication. Climate change, natural disasters, state collapse, illicit capital flows, refugees and increasing inequality present new challenges to the international community. They require joint action for the...

The Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000 have established global targets for development cooperation until 2015. They are being regularly monitored, and one may already now conclude that they will be achieved unevenly across the globe. In that light, it is...

Over the past decade, development policy has witnessed a clear shift towards a poverty reduction agenda. Unsurprisingly, this has been accompanied by changes in views concerning development finance. A dominant refrain of the present agenda is that ‘traditional’ approaches to development...