Working Papers

It would be hard to fathom any Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) being achieved without either adequate human and financial resources and partnerships or institutions that are effective, inclusive and accountable. One would expect, therefore, that two of the most cross-cutting SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, SDG16 on Peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG17 on the Means of implementation and partnerships for development would receive ample attention in scholarly work and policy analysis. A quick overview of the literature reveals, however, that although SDG16 and SDG17 are examined quite extensively in and of themselves, linkages between the two seldom receive attention.

This…

The humanitarian-development divide has long been a contentious debate in both academia and government. Despite the recent surge in the cost, frequency, duration and severity of humanitarian crises, humanitarian and development disciplines and communities of practice have continued to operate in silos. This article aims to bridge the humanitarian-development divide by interlinking the Agenda for Humanity and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The newly proposed context-conflict-contingency model of humanitarian-development connections constitutes the conceptual foundation, which is then tested by the findings of the network analysis of the 169 SDG targets of the 2030 Agenda and…

From around 2000 onward, donors and recipient governments embarked upon a new aid paradigm. The most important elements include increased selectivity in the aid allocation, more ownership of recipient countries based on nationally elaborated PRSPs, and more donor alignment and harmonization via program-based approaches such as budget support. The paper assesses the theoretical merits of this new paradigm, identifying some contradictions and limitations, and then examines its implementation over the past decade and its results. The empirical results largely confirm the earlier identified weaknesses and limitations. The paper concludes with some suggestions for improving aid practices.

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of unconventional monetary policy measures adopted in developed countries (the US, UK, Euro Area and Japan) on developing economies (Brazil, China, India and Russia). First, we analyse the domestic and cross-border financial market impact of unconventional monetary policy announcements by central banks, using a series of event studies. We find that quantitative easing (QE) by the FED, BoE, ECB and BoJ influenced long term yields, equity prices, and possibly exchange rates both in the developed and developing countries (for example we find that QE resulted in decreases in long term yields by about 125 basis points in the US, about 100…

This paper recalls the history of proposed “innovative” mechanisms by which governments could strengthen financial cooperation for development. Such proposals sought more predictable and assured financial flows to facilitate recipient country programming, while also substantially adding to the volume of highly concessional international support for development. International discussions of these proposals mostly began in the 1960s and in many cases continue today, although implementation thus far has been modest. These discussions are contrasted with generally more recent proposals that proponents call “innovative” but that do not share the characteristics of the more radical thinking…

This paper examines the distributional effects of fiscal austerity. Using episodes of fiscal consolidation measures for a sample of 17 OECD countries over the period 1978-2009, we find that fiscal consolidation episodes have typically led to a significant and long-lasting increase in inequality. Tax-based consolidation episodes tend to have a larger and more persistent effect on inequality than spendingbased consolidations. The evidence also shows that while fiscal consolidations have typically led to a fall in wage income, they have not had a significant effect on profit and rent income.