Water and sanitation sectors have been the 'natural' subjects of aid for several decades. However, these sectors also were among those most affected by changes in aid approaches and tools. The aim of this paper is to capture some of the complexity in assessing impact and effectiveness of aid in...

Horizontal inequality by ethnic group has remained remarkably persistent for wealth, education, and access to certain services in Nigeria. While significant gains in the reduction of inequality and improvement in access have been made for more locally administered services, outcomes are stickier...

Economic research on labour migration in the developing world has traditionally focused on the role played by the remittances of overseas migrant labour in the sending country's economy. Recently, due in no small part to the availability of rich microdata, more attention has been paid to the...

In the great majority of Latin American countries in the 2000s, economic growth took place and brought about improvements in almost all labour market indicators and consequent reductions in poverty rates. Across countries, economic growth was not all that mattered; external factors were...

The regional development policy in Brazil materializes mainly in the regional development funds for the north-east (FNE), the north (FNO), and the centre-west (FCO), in which more than EUR36 billion was invested between 2004 and 2010. This paper examines the economic effect of these regional...

What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This article critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay between inequality and economic growth. Inequality...

When India became a republic in 1950, the economy was primarily agrarian, with threefifths of output originating from agriculture. In the sixty years since independence, there has been a significant transformation of economic activity away from agriculture, with less than one-fifth of output now...

The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the empirical literature by assessing the effects...

This paper explores the current evidence underlying the debate on aid effectiveness, with a specific focus on the health sector. It summarizes the history of aid and outlines the methodological challenges encountered when assessing its effectiveness. The current evidence on 'what works' in the...