The Return to Foreign Aid

Abstract

We estimate the average rate of return on investments financed by aid and by domestic resource mobilisation, using aggregate data. Both returns are expected to vary across countries and time. Consequently we develop a correlated random coefficients model to estimate the average returns. Across different estimators and two different data sources for GDP and investment our findings are remarkably robust; the average gross return on ‘aid investments’ is about 20 per cent. This is in accord with micro estimates of the economic rate of return on aid projects and with aggregate estimates of the rate of return on public capital.     

Polish Return and Double Return Migration

Regional surveys indicate that about half the Poles who migrated since 2004 are living back in Poland. However, surveys of returnees also suggest that most are not committed to settling. This article explores why, looking at re-integration problems common worldwide, but also at the specifics of post-communist Poland, such as regional inequalities, job insecurity and low social trust. Although many returnees will continue to migrate temporarily, for others (notably those aged around 30) the experience of failed return to Poland inclines them to settle abroad. Such double return migrants engage in new, less transnational livelihood strategies, integrating more abroad and burning bridges back to Poland.     

Return Migration

Abstract

Immigration to the United States (U.S.) is made for many different reasons, which may be economic, political, or social or any combination of them, and subsequent reverse migration may occur for any of the same reasons. Discussion of immigration and the variety of circumstances attendant to it are wide-ranging, but usually such discussions rely on figures related to migration into the country and overlook, either purposefully or accidentally the fact that return migration has always been a significant movement in this country. This article raises the issue of limited data gathering by the U.S. on reverse migration despite the sizeable amount and quite reliable demographic information on arrivals. Discussions of social services for immigrants, therefore, cannot be considered complete or even competent if they do not include careful consideration of and attention to return migration.     

法国全面重返北约的背后

2009年3月17日，法国国民议会经过长达4个小时的马拉松式辩论，最终以329票支持、238票反对的表决结果通过了法国重返北约军事一体化机构的决定。4月3日和4日，北约成员国领导人将在法国东部城市斯特拉斯堡和邻近的德国西部小镇凯尔举行峰会并庆祝北约成立60周年。     

Return of the Volksgeist

Sir Isaiah Berlin, who died in 1997, was a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. One of the West's foremost political philosophers, he authored several seminal works, including Karl Marx, The Age of Enlightenment, Four Essays on Liberty, Vico and Herder and The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas .
We sat down for several rambling hours of conversation at a cafe in the small harbor in Portofino, Italy, at the end of the summer in 1991.     

东欧国家“回归欧洲”中的政治变迁

2004年5月1日，波兰、匈牙利、捷克、斯洛伐克和斯洛文尼亚五国正式成为欧盟成员国；随后，罗马尼亚和保加利亚两国被确定为2007年第二批入盟候选国；西巴尔干五国也在加快入盟达标的步伐。欧洲历史上一次大规模的整合，通过北约和欧盟几乎同时进行的东扩得以实现。这次整合，以具有“回归欧洲”情结的东欧国家为主角，以和平的方式在两个属性不同的联盟机构中进行，     

Financial Markets Must Not Return to "Bad Old Ways"

Thanks to the draining effects of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown emanating from Wall Street, a powershift away from American dominance is taking place. Caught between a rising China and an America in relative decline, the new leadership in Japan is recalibrating its post-World War II relationships. The G-20 has usurped the role once played by the G-8 as the governing committee of globalization. And the symbiotic coupling of "Chimerica", born out of the credit bubble built up over the past two decades, is being put to the test.
In this section, the new prime minister of Japan, the president of the European Union, the president of Brazil and a leading economic historian assess these shifts.