We examine whether absorptive capacity represents a compulsory reason to reject the proposal of a large aid increase to support a big push. We argue that poverty trap is a probability for many countries, in particular the Least Developed Countries and that an aid increase is relevant for them....

Using a rich dataset from West Africa we study the determinants of membership in rural producer organizations (RPO). We …nd that on average it is the more fortunate members of rural society who belong in RPOs. In Senegal, the dominant criteria are land ownership. In Burkina Faso it is economic...

A dominant trend in the literature maintains that donor assistance should be targeted to poor countries with sound institutions and policies. In this context, donor selectivity refers to what extent aid is allocated according to the principles of this "canonical" model. This paper shows that it...

Since the implementation of the economic reforms in 1978, there is a remarkable diversification trend in rural China characterized by an impressive development of rural enterprises. The main objective of this paper is to understand the forces driving this agro-industrial diversification which...

This paper investigates the influence of invariance axioms in the decomposition of observed poverty variations into growth and inequality effects. After a complete and critical review of the invariance axioms suggested in the literature, we show that few information is needed for the ordering of...

Financial development may lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In this paper, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China’s total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical...

The aim of this paper is to examine whether there is a co-insurance mechanism against provincial aggregate income fluctuations between the Chinese provinces. Our theoretical argument relies on the existence of an efficient allocation of risk between the Chinese provinces. According to this...

Currency substitution – the use of foreign money to finance transactions between domestic residents – is increasingly common in low income and transition economies. Traditionally, however, empirical models of the demand for money tend to concentrate exclusively on the other dimension of...

Community Driven Development (CDD) programs are an extremely important component of the World Bank’s portfolio in the developing world, representing close to $7 billion in 2003, yet solid empirical evidence on their impact is relatively scarce, especially for Subsaharan Africa. In this paper,...

The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, we examine, using a unique dataset collected in the Tunisian village of El Oulja, what might be termed "all or nothing" separability (Benjamin, 1992) by testing, while controling for plot characteristics (Udry, 1996), the proposition that farm input...