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301. Aid for Trade: Supporting Trade Preference Reform

Author:
Susan Prowse
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Aid-for-trade programs can help strengthen low-income countries' supply capacity and knowledge of trade preferences, which will allow them to take fuller advantage of these preferences. Aid for trade to support preference reform can be divided into three categories: (i) creation of information-sharing mechanisms to ensure that governments, SMEs and other businesses are aware of the opportunities that preferential market access offers; (ii) capacity-building support to overcome supply-side and policy constraints; and (iii) support to ease the adjustments to preference erosion that will inevitably occur. As with other aid initiatives, coordination and cohesion among assistance programs is critical for success. Delivery mechanisms such as the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), the Trade Facilitation Facility (TFF), and the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF), are aimed at facilitating such coordination, but more could be done. And, as preference programs are intended to be temporary, aid for trade can also facilitate graduation from these programs and compensate beneficiaries for preference erosion. Unfortunately, this area is still lacking the level of innovation and financial support needed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid

302. How Can Donors Create Incentives for Results and Flexibility for Fragile States? A Proposal for IDA

Author:
Alan Gelb
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
International Development Association (IDA) donors and others operating a country performance-based allocation system face two difficult problems: how to strengthen incentives to produce and document development results and how to increase flexibility for fragile states. Fragile states have the greatest need for projects, but their projects tend to rate poorly in performance-based allocations systems, which provide little incentive to produce successful projects in fragile states or other countries.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid

303. The Legacy of the Jubilee Debt Relief Movement: Agreements, Lessons, and Remaining Challenges

Author:
Benjamin Leo
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Over the last 25 years, the international community has pursued a series of measures to address unsustainable debt burdens in low-income countries. Early actions focused on debt relief for official bilateral claims—initially by rescheduling—followed by increasing levels of debt stock reduction. During this period, the Paris Club repeatedly reduced or rescheduled the debts of a number of countries.
Topic:
Debt, Development, and Foreign Aid

304. The Arc of the Jubilee

Author:
David Roodman
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The Jubilee 2000 movement, which called for the cancellation of the foreign debts of the poorest nations, reached its zenith in the late 1990s and 2000-and then, by design, shut down. In the space of a few years, it became one of the most successful international, nongovernmental movements in history. As part of a larger, ongoing project to understand the consequences and lessons of the episode, David Roodman provides thumbnail assessments of Jubilee 2000 from several perspectives, deemphasizing anecdotes and statistics in favor of major themes.
Topic:
Debt, Development, Economics, and Non-Governmental Organization

305. The U.S. Aid "Surge" to Pakistan: Repeating a Failed Experiment? Lessons for U.S. Policymakers from the World Bank's Social-Sector Lending in the 1990s

Author:
Nancy Birdsall and Molly Kinder
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
During the 1990s, the World Bank and several donor partners provided a “surge” in external aid to support Pakistan's social sectors. Despite the millions of donor dollars spent, the program failed. Poverty was higher in Pakistan in 2004 than it was a decade earlier when the antipoverty program began. This working paper re-releases a CGD analysis of the World Bank's program, which was prepared in 2005 by CGD researchers Nancy Birdsall, Milan Vaishnav, and Adeel Malik. The analysis reports the many problems donors faced while working with Pakistan's government to improve health and education outcomes. A new preface by Nancy Birdsall and Molly Kinder identifies the key lessons from this massive donor experiment that are relevant today, as the United States and other donors prepare to increase their assistance to Pakistan to historic levels.
Topic:
Development, Poverty, Foreign Aid, and World Bank
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, and Central Asia

306. Are Funding Decisions Based on Performance?

Author:
Nandini Oomman, Steven Rosenzweig, and Michael Bernstein
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
To what extent do the major funders of HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries use past performance to guide decisions about future funding? This question is important for those concerned with the effectiveness of the significant funding flows for the treatment, care, and prevention of HIV and AIDS: linking funding to performance can help ensure that the best programs are given continued resources (and the failing ones are not) and that program managers have the strongest incentives to perform at a high level and to improve the performance of their programs. Performance-based funding can also have unintended negative consequences. Linking funding to performance can also induce single-minded attention to specific targets to the exclusion of harder-to-measure but important outcomes and loss of integrity of information systems.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Non-Governmental Organization, Foreign Aid, and World Bank
Political Geography:
United States

307. The Costs and Benefits of Duty-Free, Quota-Free Market Access for Poor Countries: Who and What Matters

Author:
Kimberly Elliott, Antoine Bouët, David Laborde Debucquet, and Elisa Dienesch
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper examines the potential benefits and costs of providing duty-free, quota-free market access to the least developed countries (LDCs), and the effects of extending eligibility to other small and poor countries. Using the MIRAGE computable general equilibrium model, it assesses the impact of scenarios involving different levels of coverage for products, recipient countries, and preference-giving countries on participating countries, as well as competing developing countries that are excluded. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the role that rich and emerging countries could play in helping poor countries to improve their trade performance and to assess the distribution of costs and benefits for developing countries and whether the potential costs for domestic producers are in line with political feasibility in preference-giving countries.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Third World

308. The (Indispensable) Middle Class in Developing Countries; or, The Rich and the Rest, Not the Poor and the Rest

Author:
Nancy Birdsall
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Inclusive growth is widely embraced as the central economic goal for developing countries, but the concept is not well defined in the development economics literature. Since the early 1990s, the focus has been primarily on pro-poor growth, with the "poor" being people living on less than $1 day, or in some regions $2 day. The idea of pro-poor growth emerged in the early 1990s as a counterpoint to a concern with growth alone (measured in per-capita income) and is generally defined as growth which benefits the poor as much or more than the rest of the population. Examples include conditional cash transfers, which target the poor while minimizing the fiscal burden on the public sector, and donors' emphasizing primary over higher education as an assured way to benefit the poor while investing in long-term growth through increases in human capital. Yet these pro-poor, inclusive policies are not necessarily without tradeoffs in fostering long-run growth. In this paper I argue that the concept of inclusive growth should go beyond the traditional emphasis on the poor (and the rest) and take into account changes in the size and economic command of the group conventionally defined as neither poor nor rich, i.e., the middle class.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Poverty, and Foreign Aid

309. Open Markets for the Poorest Countries: Trade Preferences That Work

Author:
Kimberly Ann Elliott
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Trade preference programs are an important and underused tool for stimulating exports, creating jobs, reducing poverty, and promoting prosperity and stability in poor countries. While many rich countries provide special access for exports from the least developed countries (LDCs) to promote these benefits, the trade preferences often do not extend to the products that matter most to LDCs, such as agriculture and clothing. Improving these programs could make a major difference in the lives of the poor, while having minimal effects on production or exports in preference-giving countries because the affected trade is so small: less than 1 percent of global exports are from LDCs. And, in the longer term, improved trade preferences for LDCs will promote shared prosperity and stability in rich and poor countries alike. Recognizing the role of trade in poverty reduction, the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for poor countries call on high-income countries to provide duty-free, quota-free market access for the LDCs.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Poverty, and Third World

310. Less Smoke, More Mirrors: Where India Really Stands on Solar Power and Other Renewables

Author:
David Wheelter and Saurabh Shome
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Until recently, India's intransigent negotiating posture has conveyed the impression that it will not accept any carbon emissions limits without full compensation and more stringent carbon limitation from rich countries. However, our assessment of India's proposed renewable energy standard (RES) indicates that this impression is simply wrong. India is seriously considering a goal of 15 percent renewable energy in its power mix by 2020, despite the absence of any meaningful international pressure to cut emissions, no guarantees of compensatory financing, and a continuing American failure to adopt stringent emissions limits. If India moves ahead with this plan, it will promote a massive shift of new power capacity toward renewables within a decade. We estimate the incremental cost of this change from coal-fired to renewable power to be about $50 billion-an enormous sum for a society that must still cope with widespread extreme poverty. If India moves ahead with its current plan, it should give serious pause to those who have resisted U.S. carbon regulation on the grounds on that it will confer a cost advantage on "intransigent" countries such as India.
Topic:
Energy Policy and Environment
Political Geography:
United States, America, and India