This paper looks at public sector debt in developing countries, being concerned specifically with the relationship between aid inflows and the public sector borrowing requirement net of aid loans. After examining the public sector budget constraint and various conditions under which aid might...

This paper surveys 50 years of empirical research on the macroeconomic impact of aid, looking mainly at studies examining the link between aid and growth. It argues that studies dating until the late 1990s produced either contradictory or inconclusive results. Aid either worked, or it didn’t,...

The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called ‘fragile states’, countries with critically...

This paper models the inter-temporal allocation of foreign development aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG). A formal theoretical model of aid allocation is developed, in which aid to any one country is determined jointly with aid to all other recipient countries. This is recognized in the econometric...

This paper examines the efficiency of public sector expenditures at achieving social sector outcomes in small island developing states (SIDS). Public sector efficiency is estimated using a stochastic production function (SPF) approach and panel data since 1990. A second stage of the analysis...

The paper presents an econometric accounting of the effective corporate tax rate in Australia for the years 1993 to 1996. The estimation is a panel of Australian firms that uses a specially gathered financial data base. Using fixed and random effects, the model specifies that the statutory tax...

The international donor community has grave concerns about the prospects for poverty reduction in what it terms fragile states. A state is classified as fragile if its country policy and institutional assessment (CPIA) score falls below a particular threshold. Recognizing that all states are...

A small but growing literature has been concerned about the economic (and environmental) vulnerability on the level of countries. Less attention is paid to the economic vulnerability of different regions within countries. By focusing on the vulnerability of subnational regions, our paper...

The paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among OECD’s 22 DAC members in ‘bankrolling’ the multilateral aid agencies. These are the UN agencies, World Bank’s IDA and non-IDA programmes, regional development banks, European Community, and other...