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Iraq is the canary in the coalmine for the Western state building effort and as such should not be forgotten in discussions on what lies ahead for Afghanistan. My last trip to Iraq, a quick foray to catch up with friends and see how the country had progressed was in 2010, just as the last American soldiers had packed their bags and shipped out. Thoughts from that visit come to [...]
Why do people act in the way that they act? This is a difficult question, and one to which there is probably no single answer. But economists have typically thought of people’s actions as reflecting rational responses to incentives. The incentives that people act on are undoubtedly multifaceted and complex, and may include money, power, status, and sometimes even a desire to benefit society. But for better or worse, rationality [...]
On 8 May the government announced a ‘pause’ in the growth of the aid budget. There has been quite a lot of commentary on this, and on ‘balancing the budget on the backs of the poor’. There has been less commentary on what the budget and associated documents put out by the government as part of the budget announcement had to say about aid quality. An exception to this is [...]
A roundup of development policy issues in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre. We offer our condolences to the people of Cook Islands on the passing of former Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Henry. Vanuatu Government expels the Australian Federal Police A diplomatic stand off continues after the Vanuatu Government expelled the Australian Federal Police on 10 May in retaliation for embarrassment caused to Prime Minister [...]
Aid effectiveness has become the mantra of the day. Aid donors demand it, program implementers profess to embody it and consultants and companies make money assessing it. AusAID is all about it, even announcing an Independent Evaluation Committee and a Results Framework as part of the aid budget. Within an organisation tackling aid effectiveness takes many forms. There’s the monitoring which at a basic level involves carefully setting SMART (Specific, [...]
As in Australia, so the Canada budget, brought down a month ago, was preceded by intense speculation about its implications for aid. Many here had held out hope that Ottawa would be inspired by their counterparts across one pond in the United Kingdom or another in Australia, and at the very least maintain its freeze on official development, if not set the country back on track to annual 8% increases. [...]
The World Bank draft Discussion Note ‘Pacific Futures’, July 2011 (available here), offers some new ideas based on the constraints imposed by the economic geography of the Pacific. However, what is missing from the analysis is any discussion of the impact of the past failure to use foreign aid productively on each country’s political and economic institutions. In particular, has aid dependence over many years shaped key institutions in recipient [...]
On a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was sitting on the 5th floor of ANZ House in Suva chatting away with a friend on many issues of common interest to us. This was another of my regular visits home to meet family and share kava with my many friends who live there. The entire floor shook while a shudder passed through the whole building. We both went quiet momentarily. [...]
Are we serious about 0.5? The 2012-13 Australian aid budget, delivered last night, pressed the pause button on the ascent of Australian aid as a percentage of our economy (GNI) towards the previously bipartisan target of 0.5% by 2015. That ratio was at 0.35% in 2011-12, and was meant to increase to 0.38% in 2012-13, but instead will stay at 0.35% for another year. This means an increase in aid not [...]
While most attention will be focused on its numbers, the 2012 aid budget was also important for a number of important aid reforms. This brief piece outlines two reforms that should improve accountability and promote a focus on results: the new Independent Evaluation Committee and the new Results Framework. Independent Evaluation Committee A key recommendation from the Aid Review was the establishment of an Independent Evaluation Committee to oversee the [...]
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