Iliana Olivié

The role of international remittances in health outcomes in Ecuador: prevention and response to shocks.

This article evaluates the impact of remittances on health outcomes in Ecuador using an instrumental-variables approach. Although we do not find significant impacts on long-term child health variables, we find that remittances do have an impact on health expenditures, and on some preventive issues such as de-worming and vaccination. In addition, we find significant effects of remittances on medicine expenditures when illness occurs. In this regard, remittances are used for both preventive and emergency situations. Interestingly, we also find a significant and positive effect of remittances on health knowledge.

Newcomers to Like-Minded Aid and Donor Darlings: The Strange Case of Spain in Vietnam

This article analyses the motives behind the relations between Spain as a donor and Vietnam as a recipient of international aid. The main hypothesis is that this relationship does not respond to the traditional causes for international aid, as identified by the academic literature. On the basis of qualitative data collected in interviews with elites, the article suggests instead that a ‘learning factor’ and an ‘image factor’ might be at play in the Spanish presence, as well as herd behaviour on the part of the donor community.

Why don’t donor countries coordinate their aid? A case study of European donors in Morocco

Lack of coordination among donors poses several problems: it results in higher administrative costs for both donors and partner countries and weakens aid effectiveness. This rationale is the basis for the OECD and EU political agendas on harmonization and coordination, which has resulted in different coordination initiatives at both headquarters and field levels. However, despite the political agenda, recent studies show that for many donors and partner countries aid fragmentation has prevailed or even increased. By means of a country case study in Morocco, this document explores the obstacles to aid coordination in a specific EU development partner country. Coordination initiatives may have proliferated but not necessarily triggered results in terms of joint work or donors’ specialization. The main obstacles to coordination include varied administrative procedures; diverse administrative architectures; resistance from local authorities and also from leading donors (to abandon or share flagship aid programmes).

How to deal with the “black box” of foreign investment and development? A case study in the Dominican Republic and a methodological proposal

Abstract This article proposes an analytical framework for the study of the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on development. This case-by-case approach, based primarily on qualitative techniques, is aimed at assessing the final effects of FDI on the different aspects of socioeconomic development, as well as constructing a narrative of what occurs inside the “black box” of FDI and development. As a research tool for analysing specific investment projects, it has been used to guide a series of case studies between 2010 and 2013 (in this case, the tourism sector in Dominican Republic), showing that relevant policy-oriented conclusions can be drawn by analysing FDI using this methodology.