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Energy subsidy reform is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and tackling climate change. This paper sets out the evidence on the scale of subsidies and their impact. It then reviews the actions of donors in encouraging and supporting energy subsidy reforms. I find that, outside of analytical work in support of international diplomatic efforts, the donor community has devoted remarkably few resources to supporting developing countries to remove energy subsidies. This is despite the fact that energy subsidies exceed all bilateral aid in 59 per cent of recipient countries. The reason for this low level of effort is the political sensitivity of such reforms. The paper then draws on the recent literature on 'thinking and working politically' to provide recommendations about how donors might more effectively encourage politically sensitive energy subsidy reform.

AbstractThis paper tests the conclusions of a qualitative study on the impact of the financial crisis on the labour market in Indonesia using evidence from nationally representative labour force surveys from before and after the onset of the crisis. We find that Indonesia weathered the storm rather well: there is no evidence for increased school dropout; labour force participation fell, particularly for young workers, whilst unemployment rose for the young, but fell for workers over 25 years old. Surprisingly, real wages for employees rose during the crisis period, although those in the informal sector did not benefit to the same extent. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper contrasts the results of conventional poverty status regressions with an alternative approach, the analysis of poverty transitions, using a five-year longitudinal household survey from rural Pakistan. The results show that while the incidence of income poverty in the sample villages was high, turnover among the poor was rapid. Almost 60 percent of households experienced poverty during the five years of the panel but only 35 percent stayed in poverty for two or more years. Only 3 percent of households were poor in all five years of the panel. Furthermore, the correlates of entries and exits from poverty are found to differ in important but unexpected ways from those of poverty status. The policy implications of these findings, if confirmed elsewhere, indicate that targeting antipoverty policies using the characteristics of the currently poor is highly problematic.