Making the UK's aid budget work better

All the UK's major parties agree on ring-fencing foreign aid spending at current levels, even while the country's dire financial situation requires sharp cuts to other budgets. Peter Boone draws on the evidence on aid effectiveness to argue that our focus should not be on the amount we spend but rather on making aid work better.regional aid, health, education, poverty

The European Crisis Deepens

Successive plans to restore confidence in the euro area have failed. A combination of misdiagnosis, lack of political will, and dysfunctional politics across 17 nations have all contributed to the failure so far to stem Europe's growing crisis. Proposals currently on the table also seem likely to fail. Boone and Johnson say the euro area faces two major problems: First, the introduction of sovereign credit risk has made nations and subsequently banks effectively insolvent unless they receive large-scale bailouts. Second, the ensuing credit crunch has exacerbated difficulties in the real economy, causing Europe's periphery to plunge into recession, thus increasing the financing needs of troubled nations well into the future. Five measures are needed to enable the euro area to survive: (1) an immediate program to deal with excessive sovereign debt, (2) far more aggressive plans to reduce budget deficits and make peripheral nations "hypercompetitive" in the near future, (3) supportive monetary policy from the European Central Bank, (4) the introduction of mechanisms that credibly achieve long-term fiscal sustainability, and (5) institutional change that reduces the scope for excessive leverage and consequent instability in the financial sector.

Europe on the Brink

Europe’s efforts to stabilize its finances are failing, and the region needs to prepare for widespread restructuring of sovereign and bank debt. Peter Boone and Simon Johnson argue that Europe’s financial system has relied on a policy of protecting creditors from default and has thus spread pervasive moral hazard—a presumption by creditors that they will not take losses on their loans to Greece and other ailing countries. The authors argue that this situation is no longer tenable and examine three possible scenarios for the coming months as the sovereign debt crisis evolves. Under the first scenario, the euro area would try to reassert its commitment to avoid defaults and inflation. This continuation of the moral hazard regime would require severe austerity for Greece and other countries on the periphery of the euro area. The second scenario involves elimination of the moral hazard regime. The euro area would admit that some sovereigns have too much debt. A series of debt restructurings would follow. The final scenario would be for policymakers to continue to contradict themselves by promising selective defaults or restructurings of some countries’ debts while maintaining that they can ensure the stability of the rest of the euro area. But the authors argue that it is an illusion to believe that selective restructuring would not introduce contagion. Such an approach would result in panic, massive capital flight, and disorderly defaults. The ensuing chaos would in turn lead to a negatively charged political atmosphere that would make consensus nearly impossible.

Lowering Child Mortality in Poor Countries: The Power of Knowledgeable Parents

Why do over 20% of children die in some poor countries, while in others only 2% die? We examine this question using survey data covering 278,000 children in 45 low-income countries. We find that parents' education and a mother's propensity to seek out modern healthcare are empirically important when explaining child survival, while the prevalence of common diseases, along with infrastructure such as improved water and sanitation, are not. Using a GINI coefficient we construct for treatment services, we find that public and private health systems are "equally unequal", that is, both tend to favor children in relatively well-off households, and neither appears superior at improving outcomes in very poor communities. These facts contrast with a common view that a much-expanded public health sector is necessary to reduce child mortality. Instead, we believe the empirical evidence points to the essential role of parents as advocates for their child's health. If we can provide better health knowledge and general education to parents, a private healthcare sector can arise to meet demand. We provide evidence that this alternative route to low mortality is indeed a reason behind the current success of many countries with low child mortality, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, and the Indian state of Kerala. Finally, we calculate a realistic package of interventions that target education, health knowledge and treatment seeking could reduce child mortality by 32%.

The Doomsday Cycle

Peter Boone and Simon Johnson believe that the next financial crisis could lead to economic disaster

Escaping the Under-Reform Trap

Most former Soviet republics have fallen into an economic and political under-reform trap. An intrusive state imposes high tax rates and drives entrepreneurs into the unofficial economy, which further aggravates the pressure on official businessmen. Tax revenues and public goods dwindle, further reducing incentives to register business activity. This economic under-reform trap has a political counterpart. Remarkably, Communist parties remain popular and opposed to establishing the rule of law precisely in those places where they were able to delay and derail reform. No electoral backlash prompts the reforms necessary to leave the under-reform trap. The best way out of the trap in countries such as Russia and Ukraine is increased economic and political competition among the elite. Copyright 2002, International Monetary Fund

Corporate Governance in the Asian Financial Crisis

The "Asian Crisis" of 1997-98 affected all the "emerging markets" open to capital flows. Measures of corporate governance, particularly the effectiveness of protection for minority shareholders, explain the extent of depreciation and stock market decline better than do standard macroeconomic measures. A possible explanation is that in countries with weak corporate governance, worse economic prospects result in more expropriation by managers and thus a larger fall in asset prices.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39681/3/wp297.pd

Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid

Critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure. In this paper I analyze the effectiveness of foreign aid programs to gain insights into political regimes in aid recipient countries. My analytical framework shows how three stylized political/economic regimes labeled egalitarian, elitist and laissez-faire would use foreign aid. I then test reduced form equations using data on nonmilitary aid flows to 96 countries. I find that models of elitist political regimes best predict the impact of foreign aid. Aid does not significantly increase investment and growth, nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators, but it does increase the size of government. I also find that the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democracies or highly repressive. But liberal political regimes and democracies, ceteris paribus, have on average 30% lower infant mortality than the least free regimes. This may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes eve though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs. An implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs.

Corporate Governance in the Asian Financial Crisis

The "Asian Crisis" of 1997-98 affected all the "emerging markets" open to capital flows. Measures of corporate governance, particularly the effectiveness of protection for minority shareholders, explain the extent of depreciation and stock market decline better than do standard macroeconomic measures. A possible explanation is that in countries with weak corporate governance, worse economic prospects result in more expropriation by managers and thus a larger fall in asset prices.

Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid

Critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure. In this paper I analyze the effectiveness of foreign aid programs to gain insights into political regimes in aid recipient countries. My analytical framework shows how three stylized political/economic regimes labeled egalitarian, elitist and laissez-faire would use foreign aid. I then test reduced form equations using data on nonmilitary aid flows to 96 countries. I find that models of elitist political regimes best predict the impact of foreign aid. Aid does not significantly increase investment and growth, nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators, but it does increase the size of government. I also find that the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive. But liberal political regimes and democracies, ceteris paribus, have on average 30% lower infant mortality than the least free regimes. This may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs. An implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs.