The number of hungry and malnourished people in the world remains unacceptably high. Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2: Zero Hunger) by 2030 is moving increasingly out of reach, despite ongoing and widely publicized national, regional and global policy efforts to make progress (e.g....

With the Millennium Development Goals deadline only five years away, the international donor community faces significant challenges due to the global economic crisis, record government deficits, and simultaneous funding requests from nearly every multilateral development institution. This paper...

In a report presented at the UN Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002, the World Bank claims that the effectiveness of its financial aid has improved substantially by targeting aid at poor developing countries pursuing sound economic policies. However, the World Bank's success...

For FDI to help achieve the international development goal of halving absolute poverty, two conditions have to be met. First, poor developing countries need to be attractive to foreign investors. Second, the host-country environment in which foreign investors operate must be conducive to...

Introduction: Can't take it anymore? / William Easterly -- I: The power of scientific evaluation--and why isn't it done more often? -- Making aid work / Abhijit Banerjee and Ruimin He -- Use of randomization in the evaluation of development effectiveness / Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer -- It...

Essential reading for all those interested in development, poverty-reduction, social welfare and finance. Volume one offers a detailed assessment of theory and policy whilst volume two presents case studies from seven developing countries

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction: Can't Take It Anymore? -- 2 Making Aid Work -- 3 Use of Randomization in the Evaluation of Development Effectiveness -- 4 It Pays to Be Ignorant: A Simple Political Economy of Rigorous Program Evaluation -- 5 Solutions When the Solution Is the...

Despite massive investment of money and research aimed at ameliorating third-world poverty, the development strategies of the international financial institutions over the past few decades have been a profound failure. Under the tutelage of the World Bank, developing countries have experienced...