Cancelling of poor-country debt does not mean that the best way to give aid is through grants only. Aid through loans may often prove superior, provided that it maintains debt sustainability. A new scheme for soft loans is suggested, with higher interest rates and cancellation provisions if bad...

Suppose a DAC donor earmarks $1 billion of taxpayers’ money for official development assistance (ODA). The donor may use two instruments as an outright grant or in combination with a market loan to produce a concessional loan of $2 billion with a percentage grant element of 50 per cent. Many...

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...

Supposons qu’un bailleur du CAD (Comité d’aide au développement de l’OCDE) alloue un milliard de dollars de ses recettes fiscales à l’aide publique au développement (APD). Ce bailleur peut faire appel à deux instruments : soit un don pur et simple, soit un don associé à un prêt...

L’annulation de la dette des pays pauvres ne signifie pas que les dons soient la meilleure et unique solution pour allouer l’aide. L’aide sous forme de prêts pourrait se révéler bien souvent préférable, pourvu que la dette reste soutenable. Un nouveau système de prêts...

Foreign investment in telecommunications in Latin America has amounted to over $110 billion since 1990, more than for all other developing countries combined. Only one in four of the poorest Latin Americans has a telephone line; competitive markets and policies promoting access can help narrow...

A coherent institutional framework that supports investment, exchange and representation mechanisms is a key precondition for agricultural development. The importance of customs and traditions for the process of agrarian transformation has been overlooked. Changes in formal institutions must be...

Different cultures entail both a great diversity of household structures and different saving patterns. The diversity of family relations and saving patterns creates different incentives for physical and human capital accumulation. Policies can alter saving incentives and create the conditions...

Growing trade with China and India offers new export opportunities for Latin America. Latin American countries need to invest in infrastructure and innovation. * This Policy Insights is based on the Latin American Economic Outlook 2008.

Although hard to measure, informality is by all accounts high in Latin America: about half of the region’s working population can be considered informal. In Mexico, the only Latin American country that belongs to the OECD, up to 60 per cent of non-agricultural workers – almost 22 million...