Managing the Exchange Rate Consequences of an MDG-Related Scale-up in HIV/AIDS Financing

This Conference Paper by John Serieux was presented at the ?Global Conference on Gearing Macroeconomic Policies to Reverse the HIV/AIDS Epidemic?, jointly organized by UNDP?s HIV/AIDS Group and IPC and held in Brasilia, November 2006. It is part of an IPC-supported Research Programme on ?Macroeconomic Policies to Combat HIV/AIDS?. The paper argues that any adverse macroeconomic effects of a large scaling up of HIV/AIDS financing can be prevented by proper exchange-rate management, including frontloading aid, building up a modest stock of foreign exchange reserves and refraining from over-reacting to initial moderate increases in inflation and the value of the exchange rate.Poverty, MDG, HIV/AIDS, EXCHANGE RATE

Remittances and Reverse Flows in Developing Countries

This paper demonstrates that a significant portion of remittances is no longer available for domestic resource mobilization when they are used for debt servicing, capital flight, or reserve accumulation (reverse flows)

Why Aid Does Not Increase Savings Rates in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Since the mid-1980s, sub-Saharan Africa has had the lowest savings and investment rates of any region in the world. It has also been the recipient of the highest levels of Official Development Assistance relative to output. Hence, many analysts have been concerned that ODA might be having a negative impact on domestic savings.Why Aid Does Not Increase Savings Rates in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Aid and Savings in Sub-saharan Africa: Should we Worry about Rising Aid Levels?

This paper examines the effect of aid on domestic savings in Sub-Saharan Africa. It departs from the previous literature on aid and savings in developing countries by abandoning the pervasive, but untenable, assumption that all aid is used to expand the trade deficit and thus applied wholly to consumption or investment. In fact, for the period 1965-2006, the evidence suggests that 35% of any increase in aid relative to output was used to finance reverse flows (some combination of interest payments, debt amortization, capital flight and reserve increases), 41% was used to increase consumption relative to output (meaning a reduction in the domestic savings rates) and 24% was used to increase the rate of investment. However, during the extended period of increasing aid levels from the early 1970s to mid 1990s, reverse flows were a larger proportion of aid but more aid was invested and less was consumed. Also, concerns about potential aid hangovers, when current high aid levels subside, can be assuaged by the evidence that that effect has been historically uncommon in the region despite many episodes of high aid levels followed by sharp declines. (...)Aid and Savings in Sub-saharan Africa: Should we Worry about Rising Aid Levels?

Why Aid Does Not Increase Savings Rates in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since the mid-1980s, sub-Saharan Africa has had the lowest savings and investment rates of any region in the world. It has also been the recipient of the highest levels of Official Development Assistance relative to output. Hence, many analysts have been concerned that ODA might be having a negative impact on domestic savings. ODA Results This would be the case if ODA mostly encouraged higher consumption rates, and did little to boost domestic investment. Has this been the case? This One Pager investigates this question (see Serieux, 2009). Most previous analyses of this issue have presumed that aid could be used for either domestic consumption or investment. However, such analysis is incomplete since it also rests on the assumption that all ODA actually stays within the developing country

Riding the Elephants: The Evolution of World Economic Growth and Income Distribution at the End of the Twentieth Century (1980-2000)

This paper presents estimates of world economic growth for 1970-2000, and changes in the intercountry and interpersonal distribution of world income between 1980 and 2000. These estimates suggest that, while the rate of growth of the world economy slowed in the 1980-2000 period, and average within-country inequality worsened, the distribution of world income among individuals, nevertheless, improved a little. However, that result was wholly due to the exceptional economic performances of China and India. Outside these two countries, the slowdown in world growth was even more dramatic, the distribution of world income unequivocally worsened, and poverty rates remained largely unchanged.world inequality trends; international income distribution, convergence, world poverty trends

All About the Giants: Probing the Influences on Growth and Income Inequality at the End of the 20th Century

This paper presents estimates of world output growth from 1970 to 2000, the distribution of income among countries and persons for the years 1980, 1990 and 2000, and world poverty rates for the same years. It also presents the results of a series of simulation exercises that attempt isolate the effect of particular country and regional experiences on world output growth and changes in global income inequality and poverty. The authors find that rapid growth in China (despite a downward adjustment of official growth estimates) had a powerful impact on the growth of world output in both the 1980s and 1990s, but that negative economic growth in Eastern Europe more than offset that effect in the 1990s. With respect to the distribution of income however, the equalizing effect of China’s rapid growth, despite the contradictory impact of increasing domestic inequality, was dominant through both the 1980s and 1990s. Only India’s influence remained substantial by comparison. Other identifiable events of the period, such as the economic contraction in Eastern Europe and continued economic decline in Africa had little statistical impact. Thus, when the combined influence of these two countries’ above-average growth rates is removed, the improving global distribution of income suggested by all statistical measures becomes one of sharply worsening inequality. The impact of these twocountries is similarly critical with respect to global poverty reduction.

Why Not ?Front-load? ODA for HIV/Aids?

.ODA, HIV, AIDS

Aid and savings in Sub-Saharan Africa: Should we worry about rising aid levels?

This paper examines the effect of aid on domestic savings in Sub-Saharan Africa. It departs from the previous literature on aid and savings in developing countries by abandoning the pervasive, but untenable, assumption that all aid is used to expand the trade deficit and thus applied wholly to consumption or investment. In fact, for the period 1965-2006, the evidence suggests that 35% of any increase in aid relative to output was used to finance reverse flows (some combination of interest payments, debt amortization, capital flight and reserve increases), 41% was used to increase consumption relative to output (meaning a reduction in the domestic savings rates) and 24% was used to increase the rate of investment. However, during the extended period of increasing aid levels from the early 1970s to mid 1990s, reverse flows were a larger proportion of aid but more aid was invested and less was consumed. Also, concerns about potential aid hangovers, when current high aid levels subside, can be assuaged by the evidence that that effect has been historically uncommon in the region despite many episodes of high aid levels followed by sharp declines

¿Por qué la Asistencia no Aumenta las Tasas de Ahorro en África Subsahariana?

¿Por qué la Asistencia no Aumenta las Tasas de Ahorro en África Subsahariana?