Purpose – Over the last two decades global cross-border investment has increased. State-owned and managed, sovereign-wealth funds (SWFs), largely from the emerging-market economies, have started playing a decisive role in underpinning, sustaining and expanding financial globalization. This...

Growing concern that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved by 2015 should not obscure the bigger picture that development progress has been occurring at unprecedented levels over the past thirty or more years. At the same time, the MDGs may perhaps create an unnecessary...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical origins of the international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) to aid, in order to assess its present relevance. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews all the original...

The British proposal to create an International Finance Facility in order to 'frontload' $50 billion in aid per year until 2015 has generated a lot of attention and will likely be a major topic at the G8 meeting this July. But the IFF has also been shrouded in confusion and misconceptions. This...

The British proposal to create an International Finance Facility in order to 'frontload' $50 billion in aid per year until 2015 has generated a lot of attention and will likely be a major topic at the G8 meeting this July. But the IFF has also been shrouded in confusion and misconceptions. This...

The globalization of financial markets has led to an impressive rise of private commercial investment in emerging markets since 1990. This rise has been driven partly by the growth of equity investment funds - collective investment schemes where individual investors contribute to multiple...