The efficiency reducing effects of official development aid

Despite considerable disbursements of official development aid the average annual per capita income in developing countries has increased only slightly. The prosperity gap between these countries and the industrialised nations has widened. In many cases the least degree of progress has been made in those countries receiving most support in proportion to their national income. Has the channelling of vast sums of official development aid turned out to be a failure? Or has it indeed hindered the development it set out to achieve?     

The crisis of development aid

Measured in per cent of their Gross National Product (GNP), western industrialised countries currently spend far less on development aid than they did ten years ago. This is partly due to the very limited usefulness of the prevailing concept of development aid.     

German exports and economic development

The influence of the export trade on the economic development since 1974 shows how greatly economic activities in the Federal Republic of Germany depend upon the situation abroad. In this context the author analyses the regional distribution and the goods structure of German exports and discusses their medium-term prospects.     

The development of international food aid policy

The European Community is to spend ECU 680 million on food aid in 1982—an increase of 13.3% over 1981. Is this a sign of growing humanitarianism on the part of the EC or merely the side-product of a policy of agricultural protectionism which in the long run is harmful to the economies of both the donors and recipients of food aid? A look at the historical development of international food ald may help to provide an answer to this question.     

Gender specific effects of exports on work decisions in Indonesia

This paper proposes a new household panel data approach to study the gender specific effects of exports on labor force participation and household work.We construct a novel measure, the Export Exposure index, by combining information about exports and the respondent's location. The index enables us to address a key identification issue, which is to estimate the effect of exports that is unconfounded by unobserved household characteristics and macroeconomic shocks. We construct a simple model to show that if women have a comparative disadvantage in market work relative to men, and if an increase in exports increases the gender wage gap, Labor force participation of the women would be negatively related to exports. We find that in Indonesia, exports encourage women to substitute their time away from paid labor participation towards unpaid house or family work, but have no statistically significant effect on men, as predicted by our model.     

The effects of exports on facility environmental performance: Evidence from a matching approach

This paper employs matching techniques to investigate the effects of facility export status on environmental performance. Using facility-level criteria air emission data in the US manufacturing industry, we find the industry-specific effects of export status on emission intensity, measured by emissions per value of sale. In some industries, there is consistent and robust evidence supporting the superior environmental performance of exporters relative to non-exporters in terms of emission intensity for all criteria air pollutants tracked. In other industries, we find weak evidence that exporters appear to have a higher emission intensity than non-exporters. This industrial heterogeneity in the effects of exporting on the environment is closely related to industrial characteristics including pollution abatement capital expenditure, trade costs, capital intensity and others.     

The effects of exchange rate fluctuations on exports: A sectoral analysis for Turkey

This paper examines the effects of exchange rate fluctuations on disaggregated data comprising 21 exporting sectors (BEC classification) in Turkey. Building on a theoretical model that decomposes movements in the exchange rate into anticipated and unanticipated components, the empirical investigation traces the effects through demand and supply channels. Anticipated exchange rate appreciation, in line with movements in underlying fundamentals, has significant adverse effects, contracting export growth across many sectors. Random fluctuations in the exchange rate, deviations around steady-state equilibrium, have asymmetric effects on sectoral export growth. The evidence indicates increased contraction of export demand to currency appreciation over time. In contrast, the effect of depreciation in stimulating export growth has lost momentum over time. While exchange rate fluctuations had a positive net effect on export growth before 2003, the net effect is negative for the post-2002 period. The implications are anticipated movement in the exchange rate guides export plans, signaling the importance of managing fundamentals to anchor rational forecasts. Moreover, less variability of the exchange rate is likely to improve sectoral export growth in Turkey over time.     

俄罗斯能源出口的现状与发展前景

当今世界经济飞速发展,能源问题已经成为世界经济中最重要的问题之一。俄罗斯能源在世界上占有非常重要的地位。本文将通过对俄罗斯能源的分布、出口现状的论述,结合当前俄罗斯能源的情况阐述其未来的发展前景。     

Internal problems of development aid

The unsolved internal problems of Germany’s development aid require an early reexamination of the objectives and the concept of development aid against the quickly shifting world-economic background. Numerous hitherto unsettled questions concerning technical aid and its implementation have to be answered soon and expertly.     

Relief instead of development aid

Formerly an active supporter of the western industrialized countries’, and particularly Sweden’s, policy of development aid, Gunnar Myrdal has in recent years become increasingly critical of the present form of aid. In the following paper the Swedish Nobel Prize winner presents his case for a new line of aid policy.