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...

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...

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy toward Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely...

The world has increasingly recognized that private capital has a vital role to play in economic development. African countries have moved to liberalize the investment environment, yet have not received much FDI. At least part of this poor performance is because of lingering skepticism toward...

The most basic economic theory suggests that rising incomes in developing countries will deter emigration from those countries, an idea that captivates policymakers in international aid and trade diplomacy. A lengthy literature and recent data suggest something quite different: that over the...

The welcome rise of replication tests in economics has not been accompanied by a single, clear definition of replication. A discrepant replication, in current usage of the term, can signal anything from an unremarkable disagreement over methods to scientific incompetence or misconduct. This...

It is easy to learn the average income of a resident of El Salvador or Albania. But there is no systematic source of information on the average income of a Salvadoran or Albanian. We estimate a new statistic: income per natural-the mean annual income of all people born in a given country,...

The migration of doctors and nurses from Africa to rich countries has raised fears of an African medical brain drain. But empirical research on the issue has been hampered by lack of data. How many doctors and nurses have left Africa? Which countries did they leave? Where have they settled? As...