The aim of this paper is to examine the main reasons how aid can contribute to poverty reduction, the channels through which it can do so and the lessons of the literature on these issues, with a special focus on the way aid can address the vulnerability faced by many developing countries.

Universal Primary Education (UPE) is one of the main objectives of development aid. However, very little empirical evidence of its effectiveness actually exists. Until very recently, the quality of available data was not sufficient to obtain robust results regarding the relationship between...

Is the big push hypothesis consistent with capacity constraints in the study of aid effectiveness? Big push hypothesis suggests the existence of a minimum threshold below which aid is not effective, while the constraints referred to by the concept of absorptive capacity suggests the existence of...

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...

We examine whether absorptive capacity represents a valid reason to reject the proposal of a large aid increase in order to help poor countries to move out of the underdevelopment trap. We consider absorptive capacity, the set of limits to an effective use of aid inflows, under for main aspects:...

This paper revisits the relationship between aid and growth, adding new assumptions to the standard Burnside-Dollar model, where aid effectiveness depends only on policy: 1) policy itself depends on aid, which involves a dynamic formulation of the standard model, 2) aid effectiveness...

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...

As an answer to a need expressed by the UN General Assembly an Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI) has been defined by the Committee for Development Policy. The present paper, which refers to this index, first examines how a structural economic vulnerability index can be designed, in particular...