Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps) are an approach to aid management that aim to support recipient government leadership. Health aid has grown rapidly in the past 20 years and in this time SWAps have become an important health aid delivery approach. However, the empirical evidence is that the...

An important public policy question is whether improved targeting of public spending will necessarily result in more or more cost-effective poverty reduction. In an important and influential study, Ravallion (2009) shows that targeting measures perform poorly as indicators of the poverty impact...

This paper analyses the effects of access to Rural Public Works (RPW) and Public Distribution System (PDS), a public food subsidy programme, on consumption poverty, vulnerability and undernutrition in India drawing upon the large household data sets constructed by National Sample Survey (NSS)...

This paper examines the Engel curve for major expenditure categories and estimates equivalence scales for Bangladesh. We compare Engel curves estimated by semi-parametric techniques to those arising from models based on consumer theory. Our analysis supports the argument that quadratic food...

The 10 states of Southeast Asia have combined to form the developing world’s most successful and durable regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN. Economic integration among them is high and increasing. The ambitious ASEAN Economic Community is scheduled to...

Escalating oil prices and the need to control carbon emissions sound the alarm for Indonesia to reduce or be more efficient in its energy use. To create an incentive for society to be more energy efficient, they need to understand the full consequences of adopting more efficient energy use...

This paper analyzes the benefits and losses associated with cooperation among ASEAN members in mitigating their CO2 emission, particularly by implementing a uniform carbon tax across ASEAN. To achieve this goal, this paper uses a multi-country CGE model for ASEAN, known as the Inter-Regional...

International development agencies are increasingly looking to business as a partner in achieving development outcomes. Engaging business in development has become a central plank of many countries’ aid policies. However, the potential of public-private partnerships for development is still...

This is an edited transcript of the lecture given by The Honorable Emilia Pires, Timor-Leste Finance Minister and g7+ Chair, for the inaugural Harold Mitchell Development Policy Lecture at the Australian National University on 22 November 2012. In her lecture and subsequent Q&A, Ms Pires...

The end of the long civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009 generated widespread expectations of a peace dividend that would enable Sri Lanka to embark on a period of sustained economic growth, but recent developments have dampened that optimism, rekindling fears that Sri Lanka’s tale of missed...