The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent a global commitment to improve economic and social conditions in low-income countries. Capacity building is key to promoting higher economic growth, which, in turn, is an important prerequisite for making progress toward the MDGs. This paper uses...

We examine the impact of gender equality on electoral violence in Africa using micro-level data from the sixth round of Afrobarometer surveys. The sample covers 30 countries. We find that gender equality is associated with lower electoral violence. Quantitatively, our estimates show that an...

This paper identifies the factors linked to cross-country differentials in growth performance in the aftermath of social conflict for 30 sub-Saharan African countries using panel data techniques. Our results show that changes in the terms of trade are the most important correlate of economic...

It is well established that a wide range of legal impediments in countries' domestic laws have prevented women from achieving full economic empowerment, which in turn has negative macroeconomic implications. In many countries, laws often reflect and perpetuate gender norms that limit women's...

The First Millennium Development Goal (MDG#1) is to cut the fraction of global population living on less than one dollar per day in half, by 2015. Foreign aid financed investments may contribute to the attainment of this goal. But how much can aid be reasonably expected to accomplish? A...

Capacity development is one of the IMF's core activities. Its impact is monitored through a Results-Based Management framework. Using for the first time the resulting dataset, the paper investigates how the likelihood of achieving targeted outcomes correlates with macroeconomic conditions and...

This paper shows that donors that maximize relative aid impact spread their budgets across many recipient countries in a unique Nash equilibrium, explaining aid fragmentation. This equilibrium may be inefficient even without fixed costs, and the inefficiency increases in the equality of donors'...

This study explores whether IMF-supported programs in low-income countries (LICs) catalyze Official Development Assistance (ODA). Based on a comprehensive set of ODA measures and using Propensity Score Matching approach to address selection bias, we show that programs addressing policy or...

We study whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better allocation of a valuable resource: female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with...