The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers considerable development opportunities for resource exporters, given their intensive raw material requirements, including for cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium, and manganese. To exploit the benefits of new demand,...

The management of revenues from exhaustible natural resources involves a number of challenges. In this paper, we argue that the standard policy advice to managers of resource revenues has been dominated by short-termism and the lack of a perspective on economic development and structural...

The paper reviews the debate about transparency in extractive industry commodities trade. It examines the obstacles to improved transparency. A critical review of the experience with estimating losses from a lack of transparency concludes that many of the published estimates of losses from...

We estimate the impact of Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Programme using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the cut-off at which lower fertilizer yield...

While technical assistance and increased use of ICT in the area of tax administration have been regarded to hold considerable promise for greater revenue collection, the evidence on how these activities work in the real-world circumstances of developing countries is scant. The paper attempts to...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scope for international private standards to play a role in reducing business risk. Business risk is measured as variability in revenue, customer base, informal payments, and temporary firm closure. The results show lower levels of business risk...

We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and allows...

I examine impacts of general budget support in 12 countries using the synthetic control approach. First, I analyse changes in government expenditures on health before and after the introduction of budget support. Second, I look at neonatal mortality (a presumed proxy for improvements in health...

This paper discusses past and current social policy strategies in the international aid architecture. From the 1990s, aid strategy and policy shifted to put a stronger emphasis on human development. This accelerated with the Millennium Development Goals and will continue under the Sustainable...

Capacity planners in developing countries frequently use screening curves and other system-independent metrics such as levelized cost of energy to guide investment decisions. This can lead to spurious conclusions when evaluating intermittent power sources such as solar and wind. We use a...