How much tourism contributes to the economies of developing countries is controversial and often not measured rigorously. Focusing on Mozambique, this study presents a simple accounting tool - a tourist-focused Social Accounting Matrix - which makes it possible to estimate the economic...

Does foreign aid promote aggregate economic growth? In contrast to widespread perceptions, academic studies of this question have been rapidly converging towards a positive answer. We employ a simulation approach to (i) validate the coherence of recent em

Changes in the relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups are known to influence real measures of inequality. Using household budget survey and price data in Mozambique from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we show that accountin

Mozambique has achieved remarkable macroeconomic success over recent decades, boasting one of the world.s highest rates of GDP growth. However, absolute poverty remains persistent, spilling over into social unrest. To better understand the link between ag

Financial liberalisation is widely seen as key to promoting financial development and unlocking growth in developing countries. While this thesis has been backed by an extensive literature, we show that it rests on weak theoretical and empirical foundations. Data for Sub-Saharan Africa reinforce...

Summary The paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical African context. The comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are "organic by default." Survey data from a...

This paper confirms recent evidence of a positive impact of aid on growth and widens the scope of evaluation to a range of outcomes including proximate sources of growth (e.g., physical and human capital), indicators of social welfare (e.g., poverty and i

Raising schooling quality in low-income countries is a pressing challenge. Substantial research has considered the impact of cutting class sizes on skills acquisition. Considerably less attention has been given to the extent to which peer effects, which r

What determines how much foreign aid donors provide? Existing answers to this question point to a complex range of influences. However, the tasks of distinguishing between long- and short-run factors, as well as differences between donors, have not been adequately addressed. Taking advantage of...