Stephen Kosack

Effective Aid: How Democracy Allows Development Aid to Improve the Quality of Life

Research into foreign aid has mostly focused on its ability to affect economic (i.e., GDP per capita) growth. Conclusions have been mixed. I consider aids effectiveness differently: by its ability to improve quality of life. I find that, though aid does not affect quality of life in the aggregate, it is effective when combined with democracy, and ineffective (and possibly harmful) in autocracies. The results suggest that aid would be more effective if it were combined with efforts to encourage democratization.

Funding Self-Sustaining Development: The Role of Aid, FDI and Government in Economic Success

This paper challenges a long-held development-policy assumption that aid and foreign-direct investment serve as substitutes or complements in accelerating the development of the worlds poorer countries. We show both theoretically and empirically that aid and FDI affect development very differently. Aid contributes powerfully to both economic growth and human development, and the higher the level of human capital in a country, the more aid contributes. By contrast, FDI at best has no effect on economic growth, and actually slows the rate of human development in less-developed countries. We find no evidence that the degree of democratic responsiveness in government conditions the effectiveness of either aid or FDI, though we do find that democracy independently increases human development in all but the most developed countries. Our results demonstrate that FDI and aid are not, and cannot, be substitutes in the development of the worlds poorer countries. Nor even can they be thought of as compliments - certainly not at mid to low levels of development. In the end, poor countries need democracy and aid, not FDI.

Globalization and the nation state : the impact of the IMF and the World Bank

Globalization and the nation state: the impact of the IMF and the World Bank , Globalization and the nation state: the impact of the IMF and the World Bank , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The Logic of Pro-Poor Policymaking: Political Entrepreneurship and Mass Education

This article argues against the scholarly consensus that governments make pro-poor policies when they are democratic. In democracies and autocracies, a governments strongest incentive is to serve citizens who are organized, and poor citizens face collective-action disadvantages. But a ‘political entrepreneur’ can help poor citizens organize and attain power with their support; to stay in power, the political entrepreneurs incentive is to maintain poor citizens’ support with pro-poor policies. Politics and education are analyzed over half-a-century in countries with little in common – Ghana, Taiwan, and Brazil. Governments that expanded education for the poor were more often autocratic than democratic, but were always clearly associated with political entrepreneurs. The results suggest an alternative understanding of government incentives to serve poor citizens.

CAPITAL FLOWS FOR DEVELOPMENT FROM JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES

Gustav Ranis is the Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics at Yale University. His main interests are Third World development and the relations between rich and poor countries. He served as Assistant Administrator for Programs and Policy in AID/ Department of State during the Johnson Administration, (1965–1967), and has consulted on aid effectiveness for the World Bank, UNDP, the governments of Taiwan, Ghana, the Philippines and Indonesia. He was the first Director of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, (1958–1961), and has spent sabbatical years as Visiting Ford Foundation Professor in Mexico and Colombia. He was the Henry R. Luce Director of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies from 1996 to 2004 and a Carnegie Corporation Scholar, working on the relationship between economic growth and human development from 2004 to 2006. He was a Distinguished Visitor under the Advisory Panel on Chinese Economics Education, co-sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Science and China’s State Education Commission and has taught several times in China, at Beijing and Nankai Universities. He was in charge of the Bi-Centennial Symposium on Science, Technology and Development under the auspices of the National Academy of Science in 1976. He has more than 20 books and 300 articles on both theoretical and policy-related issues of development to his credit. The Singapore Economic Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (2009) 489–527