From aid negotiation to aid effectiveness: the case of food and nutrition security in Ethiopia

This paper looks at aid ownership through the lens of negotiations that take place between a country and its development partners (DPs). Based on the case of Ethiopian food security policies, it combines a structural analysis of the negotiation capital of both parties with an actor-oriented analysis of the institutional setting through which negotiations take place. First, it shows that the growing influence donors have come to have in the shaping of Ethiopian public policies results from the relative loss of legitimacy the government has experienced after the 2005 political crisis and its greater need for external economic assistance. Second, the more recent creation of a negotiation platform between the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and its DPs has allowed the GoE to enhance donor’s alignment with its development policies and regain some control over its development agenda, while giving them more room to contribute to several food and nutrition security policy reforms which have been positively evaluated. The paper stresses the need for donors to better recognise the centrality of politics in any aid intervention.     

Analysing agricultural investment from the realities of small-scale food providers: grounding the debates

Abstract

Over the past decade, agricultural investment has been presented as a catchall solution to a converging set of global crises, often with poor rural communities as the proclaimed beneficiaries. Yet the promises of such investment, such as poverty alleviation and improved food access, are routinely at odds with realities on the ground. This article offers frameworks for analysis of agricultural investment that are grounded in the realities of small-scale food providers, drawing from two studies. The first study employs a right to food framework to identify the main channels through which food for consumption is procured by small-scale food providers and the factors impacting these channels. It draws on empirical data from within the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), an investment model promised to lift rural communities out of poverty, which reflects a regional trend. Based on the shortcomings of the large-scale investments examined, the second study employs a food sovereignty framework to explore alternative forms of investment envisioned and/or already being put into practice by small-scale food providers in the SAGCOT area and elsewhere in Tanzania. While two different frameworks formed the basis of two different studies, both the studies and their frameworks are interrelated. The final section of this article makes the case for why both the right to food and food sovereignty are essential lenses for understanding agricultural investment vis-à-vis small-scale food providers and the ways in which they can serve as complementary tools for effective analysis.     

Egypt's multiproduct agricultural technology and agricultural policy

Based on the hypothesis that Egyptian farmers maximise economic profits, the multiproduct translog profit function is used to estimate input demand and output supply functions for corn, rice, and cotton crops grown in Egypt's Nile delta. Elasticity estimates indicate a generally high degree of price responsiveness. The estimates are used to evaluate Egyptian agricultural policies concerning labour, mechanisation, and output prices. The results show that Egypt's agricultural policies of taxing output and subsidising certain inputs have hada substantial negative impact on agricultural productivity.     

Country size and trade concentration

The paper attempts to provide some evidence on the nature of the relationship between country size and commodity and geographic concentration in trade, and on the effects of economic development and dependence on trade on this relationship. It suggests that the inverse relationship between country size and trade concentration is not as strong as a priori reasoning suggests; that there is no association between export concentration and economic development, nor between export concentration and dependence on trade; and that neither the dependence on trade of small countries should lead to extra export concentration, nor their export concentration should mean an impediment to economic development.     

八国集团与WTO

八国集团包括美国、德国、英国、日本、法国、加拿大、意大利和俄罗斯。八国中有四国为联合国常任理事国;美、日、德、法、英、意六国国民生产总值居世界前六位,八国GDP总值占世界GDP总值的70％左右。因此,八国集团在世界经济中起着举足轻重的作用。 世界贸易组织(WTO)成立于1995年1月1日,其前身为关贸总协定。WTO现有成员144个,另有约30个国家和地区正在申请加     

Fair trade slippages and Vietnam gaps: the ideological fantasies of fair trade coffee

Fair trade coffee sales have boomed since the late 1980s, making it one of the most recognised forms of ‘ethical consumerism’ in the world. Around the same time exports of lower quality coffee beans from Vietnam also boomed, launching Vietnam from an insignificant coffee exporter to the world’s second largest with historically unprecedented speed. These disparate projects have had significant impacts on thousands of farmers – with Vietnam’s new class of coffee producers representing three and a half times the number of coffee families certified by fair trade. Northern actors, however, have given far more public and positive attention to fair trade. This article will argue that this difference does not stem from a strictly objective appraisal of the relative merits and shortcomings of each project, but from the compatibility of fair trade with ‘free trade’ and its emotionally charged ideological fantasies. This includes unconscious beliefs and desires around individualism, voluntarism, democracy and the affirmation of the exaggerated power of Northern consumers – as opposed to the Southern agency and complicated collective action implied by Vietnamese coffee statecraft.     

民间法律援助与未成年人保护

法律援助制度作为现代法治国家的一项重要制度在司法和国家政治领域发挥着重大的作用。本文拟在总结我国法律援助工作实践和借鉴国外先进经验的基础上,对我国民间法律援助机构在未成年人权益保护领域内的工作的发展做一些有益的探索。     

Special drawing rights and development aid

This article examines the case for establishing a link between the creation of Special Drawing Rights and development aid, analyses the various objections that have been raised against the idea, and describes several possible mechanisms for making the link operative. It then considers the national burden sharing, balance of payments and foreign exchange reserve implications of an ‘organic’ link. Finally, it suggests how, in the context of international monetary reform, the disposal of the large outstanding dollar and sterling reserve‐currency holdings of the developed countries could also be linked with aid to the developing countries.     

Governance,economy, and foreign aid

Much of the current donor discussion of governance takes place outside of a historical or theoretical context. This article locates the governance issue within recent political science, development management, and institutional economics literature. The review focuses on accountability, participation, transparency, and predictability or the rule of law, and includes a discussion of the impact of these variables upon economic performance. It concludes that donors can best assist good governance to develop by helping to foster conditions under which developing societies can push their governments to deliver the accountability, transparency and rule of law that sustainable development requires. Deborah Brautigam is assistant professor in the department of political science at Columbia University. She has written and published on various aspects of foreign aid and development, in particular, on China’s foreign aid program in West Africa. Her current research is on the comparative politics of industrial adjustment in Asia and Africa.     

Negotiating sustainable trade: explaining the difference in social standards in US and EU preferential trade agreements

Since the early 2000s, both US and EU Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) include social standards that aim to protect workers and the environment. However, the US and the EU have chosen fundamental different approaches for the enforcement of these clauses. While the US pursues a sanction-based approach, the EU solely relies on dialogue and cooperation mechanisms. Hence, to the surprise of many, social standards in U.S PTAs appear to be stricter than the ones in EU PTAs. Why do the two biggest trade powers of the world handle social clauses in PTAs so differently? In this paper, I argue that disparities in domestic politics account for their different strategies towards social standards. Drawing on the principal-agent literature, the paper analyses the PTA negotiations of the US and the EU with Peru and Colombia.     

春光无限的中澳经贸关系

1月15日,国务院总理温家宝在菲律宾宿务会见澳大利亚总理霍华德时说,自去年4月中澳双方就发展21世纪互利共赢的全面合作关系达成共识以来,中澳各领域的交流与合作取得了许多新进展,双边关系继续呈现良好的发展势头;事实证明,中澳关系完全可以成为不同社会制度和文化背景国家之间和谐共处的典范.正如温总理所说,刚刚过去的2006年对于中国与澳大利亚来说,的确是不同寻常的一年.     

Tansnationals and foreign trade: Evidence from Brazil

A recursive model of exports and imports of manufactures, in which imports depend in part on exports, is estimated using data for a cross‐section of 17,053 industrial firms. In this sample, 652 firms are foreign‐owned. Explanatory variables include firm size, skill intensity, advertising and other variables in addition to foreign ownership. Foreign ownership has a large, independent effect on both export performance and import propensities, but foreign ownership in itself explains little of the relatively low export/import ratios registered by affiliates of transnationals.     

The IMF and the mobilisation of foreign aid

Particularly in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, there has been much discussion of the association between the International Monetary Fund and bilateral aid flows. What role should the Fund be playing in helping to achieve the MDGs? Some observers have suggested that the Fund should seek to reduce its role in poor countries and should be minimising its own lending. They see aid donors taking on a larger role and present the IMF and aid donors as substitutes. Others envisage a much bigger lending role for the Fund. This may hint at complementarities. Although this discussion raises important policy issues there are very few studies that examine the relationship empirically. This paper attempts to help fill this gap. It explores the extent to which the IMF has had a catalytic effect on Official Development Assistance and the potential channels through which catalysis might work. It finds strong evidence of a positive association and suggests that this may have more to do with conditionality than with the provision of IMF resources. But it may not represent catalysis in the conventional sense. There is a synergy between the IMF and bilateral aid that may yet be more fully developed and exploited.     

Economic development,foreign aid and vintage growth

Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development. By Michael Lipton. London: Temple Smith, 1977. Pp. 467; £9.50.

Agrarian Reform and Agrarian Reformism: Studies of Peru, Chile, China and India. Edited by David Lehmann. London: Faber and Faber, 1974. Pp. 320; £1.80 in paperback.

Agricultural Supply Response: A Survey of the Econometric Evidence by Hossein Askari and John Thomas Cummings. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976. Pp. xvii + 443, tables, figures; $32.50.

The Economic Development of the Third World since 1900. By Paul Bairoch. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1975. £5.00 (Paperback £2.45).

The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India. By Marguerite Ross Barnett. Princeton University Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 368. £15.70.

Responses to Population Growth in India: Changes in Social, Political and Economic Behaviour. Edited by Marcus F. Franda. New York, Washington and London: Praeger, 1975. Pp. x + 277.

Value and Price in the Labour‐Surplus Economy. By Stephen A. Marglin. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1976. Pp. 252; £7.50.

Using Shadow Prices. By I. M. D. Little and M. F. G. Scott. London: Heinemann, 1976. Pp. vii + 254; £6.80

Cost‐Benefit Analysis: A Case Study of the Ratnagari Fisheries Project. By S. N. Mishra and J. Beyer. Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Company, 1976. Pp. x +171; Rs. 35.00.

Japan: An Economic Survey, 1953–1973. By Andrea Boltho. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp. xv + 204; £5.00 (cloth), £2.75 (paper).

Economic Independence in Africa. Ed. D. P. Ghai. East African Literature Bureau, 1973. Pp. 235.

Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependence: Copper in Chile. By Theodore H. Moran. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Pp. xiv+286, tables, figures; £6.60.

Money and Credit in Developing Africa. By Eric L. Furness. London: Heinemann, 1975. Pp. 308, tables, figures.

Rural Money Markets in India By Subrata Ghatak. Delhi: The MacMillan Co. of India Ltd, 1976. Pp. vii + 230, Rs. 58.00.

Wage Issues in a Developing Economy: The Indian Experience. By A. J. Fonseca, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 264; £5.25.

Internal Migration in Developing Countries. By Michael P. Todaro, Geneva: International Labour Office, 1976. Pp vi + 106; 20 Sw Frs.

Development Planning and Spatial Structure. Edited by Alan Gilbert. London and New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976. Pp.+ 207.