Variations of bilateral aid flows are difficult to explain on the basis of official development objectives or recipient need. At the example of US aid to Pakistan, this paper suggests alternative political economic explanations, notably the relevance of ethnic lobbying and the relevance of US...

Donor agencies invest considerable financial and human resources to evaluate the outcome of their development activities. To derive institutional conditions conducive to an efficient use of these resources, we develop a multi-level principal-agent model focusing on the various interests of the...

As opposed to many other school inputs, textbooks have frequently been demonstrated to significantly foster student achievement. Using the rich data set provided by the 'Program on the Analysis of Education Systems' (PASEC) for five francophone, sub-Saharan African countries, this paper goes...

Only three years after its initial endorsement by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) - Initiative was considerably altered and enhanced. How did this change come about? Neither developments in economic theory, nor empirical evidence of changed...

Low teacher motivation and its detrimental effect on student achievement are central problems of many education systems in Africa. Using standardized data for student achievement in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d`Ivoire, Madagascar and Senegal, this paper analyzes the empirical links between...

With SACMEQ and PASEC there are now two large data bases available on student achievement, socio-economic background and school and teacher characteristics in both anglophone and francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. A joint analysis of PASEC and SACMEQ in a common education production function...

Based on recent data collected by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the OECD in the context of their joint World Education Indicators project, labour market outcomes of education can be reassessed for selected non-OECD countries (Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Thailand and...

The approval of methodologies and individual projects in the context of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is often an issue of national interest. Decisions of the CDM Executive Board (EB) can thus be expected to be highly politicized. Based on data for about 250...

In Malawi, informal off-farm labour (ganyu) has often been described as a survival strategy which eventually drives poor rural households into even further destitution. Based on data from the Second Integrated Household Survey for 2004, we estimate the determinants of the decision to supply...

Only three years after its initial endorsement by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) - Initiative was considerably altered and enhanced. How did this change come about? Neither developments in economic theory, nor empirical evidence of changed...