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Foreign aid looms large in the public discourse; and international development assistance remains squarely on most policy agendas concerned with growth, poverty and inequality in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. The present review takes a retrospective look at how foreign aid has evolved since World War II in response to a dramatically changing global political and economic context. I review the aid process and associated trends in the volume and distribution of aid and categorize some of the key goals, principles and institutions of the aid system. The evidence on whether aid has been effective in furthering economic growth and development is discussed in some detail. I add perspective and identify some critical unresolved issues. I finally turn to the current development debate and discuss some key concerns, which I believe should be kept in mind in formulating any agenda for aid in the future

Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises - the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global trade. Its success contradicts its characterization as an example of export-led growth and highlights the role of the state, particularly in maintaining and influencing investment. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around each crisis, and actions by the government to counteract that dependence and bolster the domestic economy while continuing to restructure the economy toward greater emphasis on the private sector. Growth, employment and poverty alleviation have been maintained at the expense of renewed inflation, larger budget deficits, and currency depreciation. The stop-go nature of present macroeconomic policy is the consequence of balancing growth versus inflation, responding to severe external shocks and holding to a growth objective in the face of substantial internal and external criticism.

This paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers' agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly increase their investment in land improvement as a result of relatives moving into public office. Connections to office holders appear to be important for investment because they strengthen de facto land property rights and improve access to off-farm employment and to informal loans. The findings underline the importance of informal networks for economic behaviour in environments with developing institutions and markets. They also suggest the presence of an untapped potential for economic development: if households without connections could obtain equally strong property rights and access to credit and insurance as the well-connected households, investment levels would rise substantially.

In this paper we calibrate two static computable general equilibrium (CGE) models with respectively 16 and 5,999 representative households. Aggregated and disaggregated household categories are consistently embedded in a 2000 social accounting matrix for Vietnam, mapping on a one-to-one basis to each other. Distinct differences in poverty assessments emerge when the impact of trade liberalization is analyzed in the two models. This highlights the importance of modeling micro household behavior and related income and expenditure distributions endogenously within a static CGE model framework. Our simulations indicate that poverty will rise following a revenue-neutral lowering of trade taxes. This is interpreted as a worst case scenario, which suggests that government should be proactive in combining trade liberalization measures with a pro-poor fiscal response to avoid increasing poverty in the short to medium term. – poverty ; trade liberalization ; general equilibrium models ; Vietnam

This paper makes use of a 1997 computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyse three potential strategies that Mozambique can pursue unilaterally with a view to initiating a sustainable development process. They include (i) an agriculture-first strategy, (ii) an agricultural-development led industrialization (ADLI) strategy, and (iii) a primary-sector export-oriented strategy. The ADLI strategy dominates the other development strategies since important synergy effects in aggregate welfare arise from including key agro-industry sectors into the agriculture-first development strategy. Moreover, the ADLI strategy can be designed so it has a relatively strong impact on the welfare of the poorest poverty-stricken households, and still maintain the politically sensitive factorial distribution of income.

To continue its economic growth and create new and better livelihoods, Africa must transform the productive side of its economy. Ongoing globalization - in trade, finance, and technology - opens up new possibilities for structural transformation, but also new risks as Africa's integration with the global economy evolves. Climate change is impacting productive sectors and the livelihoods linked to them. Consolidating war-to-peace transition remains imperative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and others, as they need inclusive growth to reinforce the politics of peace. This is the context within which official development assistance must operate and evolve if it is to remain useful.

The concept of green growth implies that a wide range of developmental objectives, such as job creation, economic prosperity and poverty alleviation, can be easily reconciled with environmental sustainability. This study, however, argues that rather than being win-win, green growth is similar to most types of policy reforms that advocate the acceptance of short-term adjustment costs in the expectation of long-term gains. In particular, green growth policies often encourage developing countries to redesign their national strategies in ways that might be inconsistent with natural comparative advantages and past investments. In turn, there are often sizeable anti-reform coalitions whose interests may conflict with a green growth agenda. We illustrate this argument using case studies of Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa, which are engaged in development strategies that involve inorganic fertilizers, biofuels production, and coal-based energy, respectively. Each of these countries is pursuing an environmentally suboptimal strategy but nonetheless addressing critical development needs, including food security, fuel, and electricity. We show that adopting a green growth approach would not only be economically costly but also generate substantial domestic resistance, especially amongst the poor.

This study analyses the difficulties and problems encountered in transforming the Vietnamese financial sector from one subordinate to government objectives and goals to an autonomous sector guided by market forces and competitive pressures. Here, the history of financial sector liberalization is traced and close attention paid to the activities and autonomy of the State Bank of Vietnam, the institution responsible for the supervision and regulation of the financial sector in Vietnam. Overall, the authors argue that ensuring a timely, fair and transparent supervision and regulation of the financial sector is of central importance to financial sector development and stability. Liberalizing financial markets is not solely a question of limiting and/or restricting government influence but may in fact involve the opposite, the influence and power of supervisory and regulatory institutions in many cases needing to be strengthened.

Little is known about the extent to which public spending is targeted towards the poor in Mozambique. The objective of the present paper is to assess whether public expenditures on education and health, in particular, are successful at reaching the poorer segments of the Mozambican population. Standard non-behavioural benefit-incidence methodology is applied, combining individual client information from survey data with provincial-level data on the cost of service provision. Most of the public services we are able to measure turn are moderately progressive, although some of the instruments we could not measure are probably less equally distributed. In Mozambique it appears that regional and gender imbalances in health and education are more significant than income-based differences. Nevertheless, increased public expenditures on health and education—such as that related to the HIPC initiative—are likely to have significant poverty reducing effects.

Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, in transition economies such as Vietnam and China, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot level, we show that crop choice restrictions are widespread and prevent crop diversification. Restrictions do not decrease household income, but restricted households work harder, and there are indications that they are supplied with higher quality inputs. Our findings are consistent with the view that the Vietnamese government has managed to intervene effectively in agricultural (rice) production to promote output and food security. At the same time, it is now time to carefully consider the potential benefits of a more diversified crop pattern.

This paper considers the relationship between external aid and development in Mozambique from 1980 to 2004. The main objective is to identify the specific mechanisms through which aid has influenced the developmental trajectory of the country and whether one can plausibly link outcomes to aid inputs. We take as our point of departure a growth accounting analysis and review both intended and unintended effects of aid. Mozambique has benefited from sustained aid inflows in conflict, post-conflict and reconstruction periods. In each of these phases aid has made an unambiguous, positive contribution both enabling and supporting rapid growth since 1992. At the same time, the proliferation of donors and aid-supported interventions has burdened local administration and there is a distinct need to develop government accountability to its own citizens rather than donor agencies. In ensuring sustained future growth, Mozambique will have to develop its capacity to maximise the benefits from its natural resources while ensuring at the same time the necessary framework is put in place to promote constructive integration in international markets

Improvements in agricultural productivity and reductions in marketing costs in Mozambique are analysed using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The model incorporates detailed marketing margins and separates household demand for marketed and home-produced goods. Simulations improving agricultural technology and lowering marketing margins yield gains across the economy, but with differential impacts on factor returns. A combined scenario reveals significant synergy effects, as welfare gains exceed the sum of gains from the individual scenarios. Factor returns increase in roughly equal proportions, an attractive feature when assessing the political feasibility of policy initiatives. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1 ; TMD

This paper explores the productivity performance of the manufacturing sector in Vietnam between 2001 and 2007. Total Factor Productivity indices are computed using an index number approach and the productivity performance of manufacturing sub-sectors is analysed. We find that productivity increases in almost all sectors and that for many sectors the dispersion in productivity is declining over time. However, for the most productive sectors the gap is widening suggesting that productivity is being driven by the most productive enterprises getting better, leaving the least productive behind. The empirical analysis reveals investment and technology usage as important determinants of enterprise productivity levels. Specifically, higher levels of productivity are found in foreign- and state-owned enterprises, driven almost entirely by higher levels of investment and technology usage. Our results provide a strong quantitative basis in support of ongoing government initiatives aimed at encouraging investment in technology and innovation. They also point to the clear need for such initiatives to be complemented by measures to provide a more balanced distribution of investment, such that a level playing field is created for the different types of enterprises.

Following Mozambique's economic collapse in 1986, the country began a wide-ranging process of reform, with the support of the international community. The diagnosis was of an economy that failed to maintain monetary control, consumed beyond its means, focused production excessively on nontraded goods, and relied on inefficient and inflexible microeconomic structures. Nevertheless, Mozambique was also at war. The pace of stabilization and structural adjustment quickened after 1992, when, concurrent with the demise of apartheid, civil strife finally came to an end. After more than 10 years of adjustment, the reform program has now been essentially implemented. Yet, this does not imply, as shown in this study, that sufficient conditions for sustained economic development are in place. Mozambique remains very poor, and even under highly optimistic assumptions about the future, the development process is set to last for decades. This report attempts to respond to some of the basic development challenges facing Mozambique and to provide both qualitative and quantitative insights for policymaking in the years to come. Throughout, the issues addressed are approached from an economywide perspective Finally, this study aims to demonstrate that sophisticated analytical tools can be of significant value, even in "data-poor" situations. The need for a clear perspective and in-depth understanding of the socioeconomic complexities of the country in question stands out. However, while the analyses in this report are Mozambique specific, the basic analytical approach is replicable and could be brought to bear on other countries both within and outside Africa. -- From Authors' Introduction. ; PR ; IFPRI1; Research Methodology and Models ; TMD

This working paper documents the construction of the 1994 and 1995 Mozambican social accounting matrices (SAMs). The aggregate macro-SAM is called MACSAM, and the disaggregated version is MOZAM. With 13 agricultural and two agricultural processing activities, the primary sectors are particularly well represented in MOZAM. There are also 40 commodities, and the three factors of production: agricultural and non-agricultural labour, and capital. Two household types (urban and rural) are identified, and government expenditure is divided into two separate accounts, recurrent government and government investment. MOZAM includes a number of innovative features, partly reflected in household demand, where a distinction is made between home consumption of own production and private consumption of marketedcommodities. Home consumption avoids trade and transport margins. Thus, MOZAM captures prevailing incentives for households to avoid markets and function more as autonomous production/consumption units. The disaggregation of household demand brings marketing margins in focus in relation to decisions regarding production. However, transactions costs are also important for exported and imported commodities. Domestic, export and import marketing margins are therefore explicitly broken out for each activity in MOZAM. Procedures used to balance MACSAM and MOZAM are also documented, including the use of maximum entropy methods to estimate the SAMs, which make efficient use of all available data in a framework that incorporates prior information and constraints. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1 ; TMD