The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of recipient country systems for managing aid. The target is premised on a view that country systems are strengthened when donors trust recipients to manage aid funds, but undermined when donors manage aid...

Fiji is in the midst of a consultation process for a new Constitution on which General Elections are scheduled to be held in 2014. The new Constitution is going to be the fourth one for Fiji. During the first decade of independence, FijiÕs economy grew at a rate of more than 5% per annum....

Business is increasingly seen by international aid agencies as a partner in development. Recommendation 21 of the recent Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness for the Australian Government reflects this: ‘The power of business should be harnessed and business innovation should be encouraged,...

Fragile states are those characterised by problems of weak governance or of conflict, internal or cross border. They are also described, less crisply but more carefully, as countries in fragile and conflict affected situations – hence the acronym used in this paper, FCA countries. For about a...

Is China-Africa economic relation instrumental for capital flight and poverty reduction in FZ? Does it matter in the improvement of external debt’s impact on GDP per capita and capital flight reduction in particular? This paper extends and assesses the Asongu and Aminkeng (2013) conclusions...

Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibit such positive deviance. These theories...

In addition to the heart-breaking human costs, violent civil rebellion is a cause of chronic economic under-development. Employment programs with former combatants and at-risk youth have improved their livelihoods, but not their support for non-violence and respect for law. Rebel groups provide...

In this study, we argue that an approach which will reconcile the two opposing camps in Sino-African relations and bring the most progress is a “middle passage” that greases contradictions and offers an accommodative, balanced and pragmatic vision on which Africans can unite. We present a...

Trade costs matter, in particular for small island developing countries, such as Pacific island Countries (PICs), given their economic size and remoteness from the world markets. This paper examines whether PICs' performance in cross-border trade costs is informed by the extent of their...

Territorial cooperation, taken as collaboration "beyond national boundaries", among administrative bodies and/or political actors, generally offers the ground for functional cooperation towards problem-solving and challenge-tackling, along with the exploitation of the local and regional...