Aid, policy and growth in post-conflict societies

Countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil wars, and covers 17 societies that were in their first decade of post-conflict economic recovery. We first investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is systematically different in post-conflict countries. We find that during the first 3 post-conflict years absorptive capacity is no greater than normal, but that in the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its normal level. Thus, ideally, aid should phase in during the decade. Historically, aid has not, on average, been higher in post-conflict societies, and indeed it has tended to taper out over the course of the decade. We then investigate whether the contribution of policy to growth is systematically different in post-conflict countries, and in particular, whether particular components of policy are differentially important. For this we use the World Bank policy rating database. We find that growth is more sensitive to policy in post-conflict societies. Comparing the efficacy of different policies, we find that social policies are differentially important relative to macroeconomic policies. However, historically, this does not appear to have been how policy reform has been prioritized in post-conflict societies.     

Unemployment insurance: Risk sharing versus efficiency

Two models of spot labor markets are presented in which labor suppliers have heterogeneous attitudes towards effort and in which uncertainty prevails on labor productivity and growth. The problem of selecting efficient rules to manage unemployment insurance (UI) systems is considered. We show that there does not exist any system which combines an efficient allocation of labor with an efficient allocation of risks among employees, unemployed workers and capital-owners. Pareto-efficient policy rules are a best compromise between these two conflicting objectives. It implies that productive efficiency could be improved in periods of mass unemployment by reducing UI benefits. That would be at the expense of more inefficiencies in the sharing of macroeconomic risks. At the optimum, the UI benefit is positively correlated to growth and it is negatively correlated to labor productivity.     

韩国电信(KT)移动WiMAX(WiBro)服务介绍

移动WiMAX与WiBro之间的关系WiBro源自韩国。早在2004年7月韩国信息通讯部(MIC)正式公布移动WiMAX(WiBro)的服务要求之前,韩国电信技术协会(TTA)内部就开展了一项本地     

Illusory revenues: Import tariffs in resource-rich and aid-rich economies

Where imports are financed predominantly by rents from resource extraction or aid the revenue generated by tariffs is illusory. Revenue earned by the tariff is offset by a reduction in the real value of aid and resource rents. Revenue is however moved between accounts in the government budget which, in the case of aid, may reduce the burden of donor conditionality. We demonstrate this proposition for a simple central case and show that the result is not overturned by generalisations around this case. We argue that trade policy formulation in such economies should recognize the illusory nature of tariff revenues.     

"带形容词"的民主:比较研究中的概念创新

近年来,世界各国民主化的趋势使得学者们必须面对两个具有潜在矛盾的目标:其一是建立一个能涵盖各个国家不同经验、具有多样性的民主概念;其二是在不扩大概念的基础上扩大对这一大类案例的分析。本文认为这种双重挑战导致了概念创新的加速,产生了几百种民主的亚类型———也就是“带形容词”的民主。本文对出现的三种重要创新类型的优势和弱点进行了探讨,这三种类型是:对民主定义的“精确化”;对与民主相关联的大概念进行转化;以及建立不同的亚类型。鉴于这些重新定义民主概念的策略所产生的含义具有复杂的结构,我们显得老生常谈式的结论其实具有新的紧迫含义:学者们必须通过对他们所使用的民主概念进行清楚的定义和说明来为自己的研究定位。     

Commodity prices and growth: An empirical investigation

Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of higher commodity prices on the long-run growth of commodity exporters is ambiguous, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise income in the short run. In this paper we adopt panel error correction methodology to analyze global data for 1963 to 2008 to disentangle the short and long run effects of international commodity prices on output per capita. Our results show that commodity booms have unconditional positive short-term effects on output, but non-agricultural booms in countries with poor governance have adverse long-term effects which dominate the short-run gains. Our findings have important implications for non-agricultural commodity exporters with poor governance, especially in light of the recent wave of resource discoveries in low-income countries.     

Density versus Quality in Health Care Provision: Using Household Data to Make Budgetary Choices in Ethiopia

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest inthe world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improvinghealth outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principalproblem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devotinga large share of the health budget to building more facilities.But household data suggest that usage of health facilities issensitive not just to the distance to the nearest facility butalso to the quality of health care provided. If the qualityof weak facilities were raised to that currently provided bythe majority of facilities in Ethiopia, usage would rise significantly.National data suggest that given the current density and qualityof service provision, additional expenditure on improving thequality of service delivery will be more cost-effective thanincreasing the density of service provision. The budget allocationrule presented in the article can help local policymakers makedecisions about how to allocate funds between improving thequality of care and decreasing the distance to the nearest healthcare facility.     

Investment in Africa's Manufacturing Sector: A Four Country Panel Data Analysis

Firm level data for the manufacturing sector in Africa, presented in this paper, shows very low levels of investment. The importance of profit effects on investment is investigated using a flexible accelerator, a specification based on the Euler equation and a simple generalisation of these specificiations. There are controls for firm fixed effects. It is shown that the profit effect is very similar for both the accelerator and Euler equation specifications. A comparison with other studies shows that, for small firms, the effect is much smaller in Africa than for other countries. Reasons for the relative insensitivity of investment to profits in African firms are suggested. For the most general specification tested there are no significant differences in the size of the profit effect across the four countries in the study.     

Ethnicity, Politics and Economic Performance

The paper investigates the effects of ethnic diversity on economic performance. Previous studies have found that diversity has various detrimental microeconomic effects, tending to reduce public sector performance, and has large detrimental effects on the overall growth rate. I develop a simple model of the effect of ethnic diversity on a government decision problem in which there is a tradeoff between growth and distribution, in the contexts of democracy and dictatorship. I find that in democracy ethnic diversity has no effect upon the decision, whereas in dictatorship ethnic diversity leads to a government choice which reduces the growth rate. I then test these propositions on two data sets. The first is for 94 countries over the period 1960–1990. I find that whether diversity adversely affects overall economic growth depends upon the political environment. Diversity is highly damaging to growth in the context of limited political rights, but is not damaging in democracies. The second is for World Bank projects in 89 countries. I find that the same relationship between diversity and democracy affects the proportion of projects which are successful.     

Implications of ethnic diversity

Ethnically differentiated societies are often regarded as dysfunctional, with poor economic performance and a high risk of violent civil conflict. I argue that this is not well founded. I distinguish between 'dominance', in which one group constitutes a majority, and 'fractionalization', in which there are many small groups. In terms of overall economic performance, I show that both theoretically and empirically, fractionalization is normally unproblematic in democracies, although it can be damaging in dictatorships. Fractionalized societies have worse public sector performance, but this is offset by better private sector performance. Societies characterized by dominance are in principle likely to have worse economic performance, but empirically the effect is weak. In terms of the risk of civil war, I show that both theoretically and empirically fractionalization actually makes societies safer, while dominance increases the risk of conflict. A policy implication is that fractionalized societies are viable and secession should be discouraged.
—Paul Collier