An overview of aid effectiveness, determinants and strategies

This paper provides an overview of issues relating to aid effectiveness. It argues that it is impossible to give a definitive answer to the question of whether aid is effective, and that it is more useful to ask what can be done to make aid more effective. The paper then groups the various determinants of aid effectiveness, as well as strategies to improve effectiveness, under three headings: the performance of the recipient (developing) country government; the performance of the aid agency of the donor (developed) country; and the interaction between the two. This provides, it is argued, a useful framework within which to understand different and competing arguments about how to improve aid effectiveness.aid, aid effectiveness

Does the World Bank have a micro-macro paradox or do the data deceive?

In 1986, Mosely first drew attention to an apparent paradox in the performance of international aid. Microeconomic data from evaluations of aid financed projects showed a majority of projects were successful, whereas macroeconomic data from regressions of aid on growth were discouraging. The paradox, if real, implied that the aggregate impact of aid was less the sum of its parts. Mosely asked whether the paradox was real of whether the “data deceived.” This question, which has come to be equated with the issue of whether aid works, has been the subject of numerous cross-country regressions to test whether aid has an impact on growth (or related variables). But the regression results have been inconclusive, and the methodology has come under attack. Evidence from case studies offers an alternative test. One prominent case study approach is that of Picciotto (2009), which claims to find strong evidence for the existence of the paradox, namely the fact that one third of World Bank country assistance program evaluations show success at the project (micro) level but not at the country (macro) level. This paper re-evaluates Piciotto’s claimed findings.aid, aid effectiveness, world bank

Australian aid to Afghanistan: submission to the foreign affairs, defence and trade reference committee

This submission is written by Professor Stephen Howes, Director of the Development Policy Centre and Mr Jonathan Pryke a researcher at the Centre. Professor Howes has twenty-five years of experience working in and on aid and development in the AsiaPacific region. Formerly Lead Economist for India with the World Bank and Chief Economist with AusAID, he was a lead author of the Core Group Report on Aid Effectiveness (2006), the review of Australian aid to PNG (2010) and the Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness (2012). He currently serves on the Board of CARE Australia. Jonathan Pryke graduated from the ANU in 2011 with a Masters in Public Policy and Masters in Diplomacy. Ms Alicia Mollaun also contributed to this submission via the provision of a literature survey. Ms Mollaun is a PhD student at the Crawford School working on American aid to Pakistan. She has worked for the Australian Government with PM&C and DFAT, and is currently on leave from DFAT

Asia’s Wicked Environmental Problems

The developing economies of Asia are confronted by serious environmental problems that threaten to undermine future growth, food security, and regional stability. This study considers four major environmental challenges that policymakers across developing Asia will need to address towards 2030: water management, air pollution, deforestation and land degradation, and climate change. We argue that these challenges, each unique in their own way, all exhibit the characteristics of “wicked problems”. As developed in the planning literature, and now applied much more broadly, wicked problems are dynamic, complex, encompass many issues and stakeholders, and evade straightforward, lasting solutions.asia environmental problems; food security; water management; air pollution; deforestation; land degradation; climate change; wicked problems

Expenditure implications of India's state-level fiscal crisis

Indias states have significant developmental expenditure responsibilities. While the fiscal crisis which engulfed Indias states in the late nineties led to higher deficits and debt levels, it was also associated with a rapid increase in expenditure levels, and it might be thought that this would have increased the development effectiveness of the state governments. However, a closer look at the data reveals that this is not the case. The main positive fiscal development in the post 1996/97 period is a pick up in real growth in government capital expenditure. In other respects, the fiscal crisis weakened the developmental and poverty impact of state governments especially in the poor states. Real growth of expenditure in health and education slowed, in some cases halted, and the efficiency of government expenditure fell as liquidity constraints tightened and non-salary expenditures were crowded out

Papua New Guinea's Public Services Commission since independence: Sidelined or strengthened?

This paper investigates reforms to the Public Services Commission (PSC) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) since independence in 1975. It looks at the original role of the PSC and then the various reforms it has been subject to: in 1986, 2003, and 2013, by constitutional and legislative change, and in 2019, by court ruling. We argue that since independence, PNG's PSC has been at different times made both less and more powerful. We explain these conflicting trajectories by reference to conflicting reform objectives: at times to make the civil service more flexible and responsive and at times to protect the civil service from corruption and political interference. Beyond PNG, the paper speaks to the different reform trajectories of PSCs in developing countries compared to developed ones; to possible limitations of the punctuated equilibrium approach to policy change; and to the civil service reform failure literature. Points for practitioners: The reforms to Papua New Guinea's (PNG) civil service over the years reflect a tension between making the civil service more flexible and responsive and protecting it from corruption and political interference. This case study shows the importance of being aware of the trade‐off between the two goals. Efforts to improve civil service should also focus on changing political behaviour rather than exclusively on structural reform. In many countries, such as Australia, central bodies such as the Public Services Commission (PSC) have lost nearly all their power: indeed, this has been a central component of the New Public Management (NPM) reforms that were popular in the 1990s. The PNG case, however, is one of a number that shows that this trend is far from universal when developing countries are considered

A multinuclear solid state NMR, density functional theory and X-Ray diffraction study of hydrogen bonding in Group I hydrogen dibenzoates

An NMR crystallographic approach incorporating multinuclear solid state NMR (SSNMR), X-ray structure determinations and density functional theory (DFT) are used to characterise the H bonding arrangements in benzoic acid (BZA) and the corresponding Group I alkali metal hydrogen dibenzoates (HD) systems. Since the XRD data often cannot precisely confirm the proton position within the hydrogen bond, the relationship between the experimental SSNMR parameters and the ability of gauge included plane augmented wave (GIPAW) DFT to predict them becomes a powerful constraint that can assist with further structure refinement. Both the 1H and 13C MAS NMR methods provide primary descriptions of the H bonding via accurate measurements of the 1H and 13C isotropic chemical shifts, and the individual 13C chemical shift tensor elements; these are unequivocally corroborated by DFT calculations, which together accurately describe the trend of the H bonding strength as the size of the monovalent cation changes. In addition, 17O MAS and DOR NMR form a powerful combination to characterise the O environments, with the DOR technique providing highly resolved 17O NMR data which helps verify unequivocally the number of inequivalent O positions for the conventional 17O MAS NMR to process. Further multinuclear MAS and static NMR studies involving the quadrupolar 7Li, 39K, 87Rb and 133Cs nuclei, and the associated DFT calculations, provide trends and a corroboration of the H bond geometry which assist in the understanding of these arrangements. Even though the crystallographic H positions in each H bonding arrangement reported from the single crystal X-ray studies are prone to uncertainty, the good corroboration between the measured and DFT calculated chemical shift and quadrupole tensor parameters for the Group I alkali species suggest that these reported H positions are reliable

Effects of hyperlinks on navigation in virtual environments

Hyperlinks introduce discontinuities of movement to 3-D virtual environments (VEs). Nine independent attributes of hyperlinks are defined and their likely effects on navigation in VEs are discussed. Four experiments are described in which participants repeatedly navigated VEs that were either conventional (i.e. obeyed the laws of Euclidean space), or contained hyperlinks. Participants learned spatial knowledge slowly in both types of environment, echoing the findings of previous studies that used conventional VEs. The detrimental effects on participants' spatial knowledge of using hyperlinks for movement were reduced when a time-delay was introduced, but participants still developed less accurate knowledge than they did in the conventional VEs. Visual continuity had a greater influence on participants' rate of learning than continuity of movement, and participants were able to exploit hyperlinks that connected together disparate regions of a VE to reduce travel time

A framework for a post-2012 global climate agreement

Global greenhouse gas emissions are on a steeper growth trajectory than assumed in most scenarios that underlie current international policy discussions and negotiations. Effective global climate change mitigation action will require speed, depth and breadth well beyond any efforts seen to date, and will need to involve all major emitters, including developing countries (Garnaut et al., 2008). To achieve a comprehensive global agreement at or after the Copenhagen climate conference, a principles-based framework for mitigation is needed. Here we outline a system that adds up to a global solution, and that could be broadly acceptable. It involves internationally tradable emissions rights allocated across countries, with allocations moving over time to equal per capita allocations. Developing countries would receive increasing emissions entitlements, linked to their GDP growth, for a transitional period. Binding emissions targets would apply to all developed and high-income countries plus China from the outset