Interventions designed to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are popular among policy makers, given the role SMEs play in job creation around the world. Business support interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often based on the assumption that market failures and...

Private sector development (PSD) has taken on an increasingly prominent role in both the debates as well as budgets of international development cooperation in recent years. While the promotion of private sector activities in developing countries has for a long time been part of development...

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of the intersection of development economics and entrepreneurship. Given the relative neglect of entrepreneurship by development scholars it deals with (i) recent theoretical insights from the intersection of entrepreneurship and...

The use of challenge funds to promote economic and social development continues to grow, but has been the subject of relatively little research. This paper develops a definition of what challenge funds are and how they differ from other development funding mechanisms, taking into account their...

Although Timor-Leste has made considerable progress in many areas since its independence in 2002, it faces significant medium-term challenges. The nation has pressing development needs, young institutions, and is highly dependent on oil. Oil revenues from active fields, which have been the main...

The paper enquires into the long-term effect of development finance institutions (DFI) on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies of companies in which they have invested. It does this through a review of secondary data on the ESG policies of ten companies operating in Africa and...