Dambisa Moyo’s book ‘Dead Aid’ injected new blood into the aid debate, putting the critical voice out front and declaring that it is time to stop pitying Africa. Unfortunately, that is where her contribution ends. The fact that her arguments against aid are not very convincing, may even be a liability for the critics.
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12 Feb 2010 / Lindsay Whitfield
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10 Feb 2010 / Lindsay Whitfield
Easterly is right that the aid system is stiflingly bureaucratic and over-planned, and thus rigid and inflexible in the way aid is allocated and used. He is right that the amount of planning required by donors of African governments in order to receive aid, whether for individual project proposals or for general budget support, is immense and many of the requirements are unnecessary. Easterly is applauded for making this point so boldly. However, his boldness might have backfired. His method and tactics were so polemical and critical that he offended those who he was preaching to, and so they stopped listening…
Lindsay Whitfield continues the GEG blog series on the (dead) aid debate, critically reviewing the contributions of William Easterly.
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08 Feb 2010 / Lindsay Whitfield
Everyone knows that aid is not working. That aid has negative side effects (unintended consequences) is widely accepted, but whether these are less, equal or greater than the positive effects of aid is hard to determine. The big question is how to change the status quo: change how aid is given, change how aid agencies work, change the international aid structures and processes, change the (ever growing) aid industry.
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07 Dec 2009 / Arunabha Ghosh
The success or failure of Copenhagen will depend not only on the substance of the deal but on the spirit and message of the talks as well. Negotiators inside the Bella Center in Copenhagen will no doubt go down to the wire on commas and clauses. For the ordinary citizen, the legitimacy of any climate agreement will depend on answers to four questions.
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20 Nov 2009 / Carolyn Deere
In this blog, GEG’s Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck argues that Ministers should use this Ministerial Conference to take leadership and push discussion of institutional reform and governance higher up the multilateral trade system’s official agenda.
With just over one week remaining before the Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference (30 November – 2 December 2009), WTO reform and the functioning of the [...]
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20 Nov 2009 / Carolyn Deere
The Global Economic Governance Programme is pleased to announce the release of a discussion draft of Strengthening Multilateralism: A Mapping of Proposals on WTO Reform and Global Trade Governance, by Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck and Catherine Monagle, and jointly published with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).
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19 Nov 2009 / Ren Hongsheng
China was urged to revalue its currency by G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors at their meeting in Istanbul in October this year. How has this been received in China?
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16 Nov 2009 / Devi Sridhar
Is the G20 a short-term crisis arrangement focused narrowly on economic issues? Or does the increased prominence of the G20 indicate significant change in global governance beyond the crisis and beyond finance?
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31 Oct 2009 / Carlos Pio
In a time when the world is still looking for a clear and definitive solution to the largest financial crisis since the Crash of 1929, the governments of Brazil and of other emerging-market countries have been given unusual political voice in global debates. But what interests and ideas has Brazil been vocalizing in such fora?
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31 Oct 2009 / Leany Barreiro Lemos
With Brazilian Central Bank Governor Henrique Meirelles visiting Oxford to give the GEG Annual Lecture this week, Leany Lemos lays out the four big challenges facing Brazil as it navigates the global economy.
