The ownership of the development policies is the very basis of the new international consensus formulated in the Paris Declaration (2005). The theoretical foundations of this approach remain somehow unclear, and we can hardly consider that PRSPs are really “owned” by the recipient...

The ownership of the development policies is the very basis of the new international consensus formulated in the Paris Declaration (2005). The theoretical foundations of this approach remain somehow unclear. The main problem is that the Bretton Woods institutions “assess” the Poverty...

Vietnam is a very important country for the World Bank. It is the first recipient of IDA credits. It is also presented by the Bank as a model country for development success, especially in terms of poverty reduction. At the same time, the Bank is very active in Vietnam: it is the first provider...

After debt cancellations, in particular MDRI (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) debt ratios in Low Income Country dropped to historic lows. They are now getting into debt again, because of Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) new loans, of emerging countries’ (namely China) loans, and sometimes...

This paper extends and applies principal-agent theory to the performance of donor projects. There is variation in the degree of divergence between the interests of the donor (the principal) and the recipient government (the agent). Further, the effort expended on observation of the agent is a...

We build and implement a normative procedure to allocate international aid based on equality of opportunity concerning the risk of poverty. This is an alternative to Collier and Dollar’s proposal (2001) which stresses the impact of aid on worldwide poverty reduction. The big problem with their...

In previous papers the authors have argued that aid is likely to mitigate the negative effects of external shocks on economic growth (i.e. that aid is more effective in countries which are more vulnerable to external shocks). Recently an important debate has emerged about the possible negative...

Since six decades alternate arguments which are favourable, or which are hostile to the development aid. Since the spreading of the term “development”, they join the political, ideological and economic debates of every period. The article shows how the term “aid” strangely resisted to...