This paper argues that the crisis facing the development effectiveness agenda is fundamentally derived from limited collective commitment to a singular model of development, one where a developed North serves as model and funder for a developing South. This is partly the reason for the...

Energy is linked to most of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century. Poverty eradication, climate change, ecosystem management, world health and security are all influenced by energy, its availability, cost, emissions and other impacts. Unfortunately, energy systems as currently...

In this paper, we address the question of whether official development assistance promotes gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa region by examining the effects of aid to Women's Equality Organizations and Institutions on women's political empowerment, measured by the proportion of...

The paper examines the role of foreign aid in building capacity to address climate change. While the experience with this topic is relatively recent and not yet extensive, analogous questions have arisen in many other areas of foreign aid. It is likely that climate change aid programmes work...

Aid beneficiaries know very little about development interventions in their own communities. This lack of transparency and information is likely to reduce beneficiaries' ability and willingness to become active in local development. It may also dampen intended aid effects on beneficiaries'...

The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature and, taking inspiration from the program...

The recent financial crisis has rekindled interest in the foreign aid supply behaviour of bilateral donors. Using the latest data covering the period 1960-2009, this paper examines how such behaviour is related to domestic factors. Based on a simple empirical model, a distinction is made between...

Over the past two decades, donors increasingly linked foreign aid to democracy objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet systematic research on this topic typically focuses on how aid influences democratic transitions. This study investigates whether and how foreign aid affects the process of...

This paper argues that official development assistance (foreign aid) is partly responsible for the lack of structural change in Africa. Africa's development partners have devoted too few resources and too little attention to two critical constraints to private investment, infrastructure and...

In accounting for the rather gloomy trend of the aid effectiveness literature over the last few years, one explanatory strand has been fiscal, suggesting in particular that aid flows in weak states have tended to erode the taxbase and the structure of institutions. We pursue this idea, tracing...