Suchergebnisse

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.10.010 ; The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has often asserted that its programs encourage aid by signaling policy credibility, commonly referred to as aid catalysis. Our study investigates this claim for sector-specific aid and for bilateral and multilateral donors using data on 136 recipient countries for the 1986–2009 period. We employ a two-part quantitative model to match the donor decision-making process, consisting of a first-stage recipient selection equation and a second-stage allocation equation on selected recipients. We find strong support that IMF programs catalyze aid on aggregate, but the evidence varies across different types of aid. Aid catalysis is stronger and more robust in sectors linked to the IMF's core competency areas, namely debt-related relief and general budget support, but weaker and less robust for infrastructure, production, multisector, and humanitarian aid, and non-existent for health and education. Across donors, IMF programs are associated with increases in aid by countries with larger voting shares in the IMF, such as the United States and Japan, but less so by countries with few votes or for multilateral agencies. This finding is consistent with research in international political economy arguing that the IMF's powerful stakeholders drive the organization's decisions and policies. Taken together, our findings emphasize the IMF's multi-dimensional impact on the global development agenda—an erstwhile overlooked factor in studies of aid allocation—while refuting the purported positive effects of IMF programs on aid for social policy. ; The authors acknowledge funding by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET Grant INO13-00020: "The Political Economy of Structural Adjustment").

Background The health gap between the top and the bottom of the income distribution is widening rapidly in the USA, but the lifespan of America's poor depends substantially on where they live. We ask whether two major developments in American society, deindustrialization and incarceration, can explain variation among states in life expectancy of those in the lowest income quartile. Methods Life expectancy estimates at age 40 of those in the bottom income quartile were used to fit panel data models examining the relationship with deindustrialization and incarceration between 2001 and 2014 for all US states. Results A one standard deviation (s.d.) increase in deindustrialization (mean = 11.2, s.d. = 3.5) reduces life expectancy for the poor by 0.255 years [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.090–0.419] and each additional prisoner per 1000 residents (mean = 4.0, s.d. = 1.5) is associated with a loss of 0.468 years (95% CI: 0.213–0.723). Our predictors explain over 20% of the state-level variation in life expectancy among the poor and virtually the entire increase in the life expectancy gap between the top and the bottom income quartiles since the turn of the century. Conclusions In the USA between 2001 and 2014, deindustrialization and incarceration subtracted roughly 2.5 years from the lifespan of the poor, pointing to their role as major health determinants. Future research must remain conscious of the upstream determinants and the political economy of public health. If public policy responses to growing health inequalities are to be effective, they must consider strengthening industrial policy and ending hyper-incarceration.