Employing a unique dataset that covers households from six West African capitals, this paper provides new evidence on the demand for informal sector products and services. We first investigate whether demand linkages exist between formal and informal products and distribution channels, and...

A core result of the aid allocation literature is that the quality of governance in recipient countries does not affect the amounts of foreign aid received. Donor countries may still give aid to poorly-governed countries because of a dilemma they face: those countries most in need typically also...

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions might entail substantial welfare implications for the affected rural population. Whether the impacts are indeed as devastating as the popular notion of land grabs would suggest depends on a number of factors, including the size of compensation payments,...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) typically depend on strong formal institutions and market-oriented intensive farming, whereas informal institutions tend to characterize the traditional villages located around them. We investigate changes to social capital in such villages when LSAIs...

The relationship between nutrient intake and wealth of poor households continues to be an issue of huge policy relevance. In this paper, we contribute to the ongoing debate on the nutrient-income elasticity using a sample of ultra-poor households with orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in...

This paper provides a numerical general equilibrium assessment of policies to reduce tropical deforestation in Cameroon. Market failure - mainly in the form of national and international externalities - and policy failures - such as highly distorted product markets - are identified as major...

The paper examines empirically the proposition that aid to poor countries is detrimental for external competitiveness, giving rise to Dutch disease type effects. At the aggregate level, aid is found to have a positive effect on growth of labour productivity. A sectoral decomposition shows that...

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are widely expected to provide better targeted aid than state agencies with a hidden agenda of commercial and political self-interest. However, principal-agent models question that NGOs decide autonomously on aid allocation. Indeed, we show empirically that...