Aid Effectiveness,Debt Relief and Public Finance Response: Evidence from a Panel of HIPC Countries

Substantial amounts of debt relief have been granted to a set of low-income countries, as an alternative aid modality. Although the theoretical case for debt relief is firmly established, only empirical analysis can show whether debt relief is indeed a (more) effective mode of aid delivery. We investigate the linkages between debt relief and other fiscal variables such as current expenditure, government investment, taxation and domestic borrowing, in comparison to the effects of grants and concessional loans. We find that the fiscal impact of HIPC debt relief follows fairly complex dynamics. For example, debt relief initially reduces government investment, but the effect becomes positive after two years, well outperforming other modes of aid delivery. JEL no. F34, F35, O11, O19     

Lessons from the Greek Crisis: Past,Present, Future

Atlantic Economic Journal - The Greek crisis has taken a heavy toll on incomes, employment and wealth. It took eight years, three adjustment programmes, one major debt restructuring and three...     

The Automobilization Process and Its Determining Factors in the Past,Present, and Future

The article has examined the mechanisms that have determined the processes of the automobilization of the population in the past and describes their possible transformation under the influence of technological, sociocultural, and institutional changes that are already occurring and expected in the future.     

我国地区差距的历史、现状和未来

在现代化启动之前,我国就存在着地区差距。新中国成立至1978年,我国实施了地区均衡发展战略,尽管如此,改革之初,东中西差距问题依然严重。改革开放以来,我国调整了地区发展战略,地区差距发生了新的变化,总体上判断,地区差距继续扩大。地区差距既是长期以来历史形成和变化过程的综合反应,也是现实的内外部环境条件差异综合影响的结果。造成地区差距的原因既有自然地理和资源等方面的客观因素,也有发展战略和政策选择等方面的主观因素。由于导致地区差距扩大的因素还将在相当长的时期内存在,地区差距也不可能在中短期内缩小,因而政府在抑制地区差距扩大方面依然存在一定的政策选择空间。     

美国债务结构、“国际货币”地位及其未来潜质

美国因公共债务率和财政赤字过高等问题,第一次丧失了"AAA"长期主权债务评级。虽然与欧债危机相比,美国债务风险相对有限,但美国作为全球第一大经济体,美元作为国际货币,其债务经济发展模式是否可持续对全球金融的影响更加深远。中美两国经济已高度相互依赖,美国债务危机的解决路径与成效,会直接影响到我国经济与金融走势。     

创业企业即兴行为研究现状探析与未来展望

利用手边当时可得的资源即时地构建和执行应对策略的即兴行为是创业企业应对环境不确定性、克服资源短缺困境的常见选择。尽管过去十五年来创业企业即兴行为(entrepreneurial improvisation,EI)的研究获得了蓬勃发展,但研究成果相对碎片化,散乱且未经系统梳理的研究阻碍了其发展成为一个有前途的研究领域。本文从创业即兴概念内涵、前置变量(触发因素和发生条件)以及结果变量等方面出发,对现有创业企业即兴行为研究进行分析和总结,并在此基础上进一步细化研究的概念框架,从创业即兴的特征与分类、内部组织因素和外部环境因素对创业即兴的影响、创业即兴对企业持续性创新的影响等方面提炼了值得未来研究密切关注的前沿主题。借此赋予创业即兴这一概念以研究的合理性和前景性,帮助引导创业者/创业团队思考即兴行为的重要性,以进一步推进其在创业实践及研究过程中的发展。     

Chasing Success: Health Sector Aid and Mortality

As many cases studies show, successful public health measures are being implemented in many places around the globe, and country-level mortality has fallen significantly in recent decades in all but a few countries. Are the two linked? Does development assistance for health (DAH) improve, on balance, recipient countries’ mortality trajectory? Using a new data source containing DAH on 96 high mortality countries, the regression analysis shows no effect of DAH on mortality. Other types of aid, including water development, also have no effect. Economic growth, on the other hand, has a strong negative effect on mortality. These findings confirm and build upon recent work by Williamson (2008) and are shown to be robust to a variety of sensitivity analyses and alternative model specifications and estimation methods.This analysis also shows that the effectiveness of DAH has not increased over time, even as the level of that funding has increased fourfold, though spending on infectious diseases and family planning may have caused small reductions in mortality. Furthermore, even though it is encouraging that DAH has tended to go where the need is highest, it also goes to states that have experienced the greatest mortality reductions in the recent past. In other words, DAH appears to be following success, rather than causing it.     

世博会之旅:回望与前瞻

11月13日,"中国2010年上海世博会重庆宣传周"在重庆中国三峡博物馆拉开帷幕.继上海、江苏、北京、浙江之后,"走进世博会"全国巡展溯江而上,来到了山城重庆.     

The Millennium Development Goals, How Realistic Are They?

Summary In its Millennium Declaration of September 2000, the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be reached in 2015 through concerted efforts worldwide. According to UN-calculations, the estimated costs in terms of additional development aid of meeting the MDGs in all countries vary from 121 billion US dollars in 2006 to 189 billion US dollars in 2015. The present communication reviews the figures reported. It appears that while Asia is well on track to achieve the goals, essentially through efforts of its own, Africa is lagging behind, albeit that according to detailed survey data on weight-for-length among adults collected in Africa for the US aid agency, rates of undernutrition are about 58 percent of the levels used as a reference by the UN, which are based on assessment of food production. Yet, child undernutrition comes out higher in these surveys. Besides mentioning reservations about the adequacy of these MDG-yardsticks, we consider the cost estimates for Africa as presented in the UN-reports and subsequently assessed in the literature. It appears that these estimates are too low, even if all MDG-funds were concentrated on this continent, essentially because they are set up as shopping lists that are necessarily incomplete and, among others, disregard many of the indirect cost of delivering the goods to the target beneficiaries, including the cost of providing adequate security and avoiding corruption. Nonetheless, recalling how hopeless the situation looked some 30 years ago for China, India, and Bangladesh, where unprecedented numbers have now escaped extreme poverty during the past decade and a half, we submit that over a time horizon of about twice the 15 years of the MDG’s and with adequate international support, realization of the MDG-targets should be possible for Africa too. An erratum to this article can be found at     

知识经济的现状、未来及其对策

本文分析了知识经济的特点 ,论述了它与信息技术、科学技术、教育的关系 ,以及我们所面临的机遇和挑战。     

中国和东亚经济:从过去展望未来

如果我们想了解中国最近的经济增长以及它所面临的问题,一个非常有用的信息就是要参考过去的一些趋势,尤其是东亚经济过去发展的一些模式,因为我们可以看到中国与东亚的日本、四小龙以及这些国家和地区三十年前的发展是非常类似的.     

Child Mortality: Is Aid Fungibility in Pro-Poor Expenditure Sectors Decisive?

If development assistance targeted at specific sectors is not used as intended, aid is said to be fungible. Using country-specific estimates of the degree of aid fungibility in “pro-poor” government expenditure sectors, I assess the effect on child mortality. Results indicate that fungibility within these sectors does not help to explain differences in mortality. However, when separating the sample into democracies and non-democracies, results suggest that pro-poor expenditures influence mortality in non-democracies only and that aid treated as fungible tends to be used efficiently in democracies. JEL no. F35, O11, O23