Substantial spatial variability in the degradation rate of the phenyl-urea herbicide isoproturon (IPU) [3-(4-isopropylphenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea] has been shown to occur within agricultural fields, with implications for the longevity of the compound in the soil, and its movement to ground- and surface water. The microbial mechanisms underlying such spatial variability in degradation rate were inv...

Total fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa are nearly double that of any other region in the world. Evidence is mixed on whether providing contraceptives has an impact on fertility. I exploit exogenous, intermittent reductions in contraceptive supply in Ghana, which resulted from targeted cuts in U.S. funding, to examine impacts on pregnancy, abortion, and births. Women are unable to compensat...

In this paper we construct a standard CGE model to explore the impact of scaling up infrastructure in an African country. As the debate on the importance of scaling up infrastructure to stimulate growth and provide a push to African economies, some analyst raise concern on financing these infrastructures after construction and that external funding of these can create major distortion and have ...

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Using a unique data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 1999 and 2004, we find suggestive evidence that international financial integration has been associated with higher levels of entrepreneurial activity. Our results are robust to using vari...

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Researchers have stressed the role of new firm activity and economic dynamism on growth. Yet, the empirical effects of international capital mobility on entrepreneurial activity have received little attention in the literature albeit the ambiguous theoretical predictions a...

Charitable Giving for Overseas Development: UK Trends over a Quarter Century Charitable giving for overseas development and emergency relief is important in the UK, being about a quarter of the size of government development aid. There has been a strong growth over time, reflecting the activities of development charities and the public response to a series of humanitarian emergencies. This pape...

O¢ cial Development Aid ‡ows are volatile, non-predictable and, also, nontransparent. All these features give rise to asymmetric information about the amount of aid ‡ows received by developing countries. This article uses a political economy model of rent extraction to show how this asymmetry (i) encourages rent extraction by kleptocratic regimes, thus reducing aid e¢ ciency, and (ii) increases...

This paper uses the cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model to assess the dynamic relationship between foreign aid inflows, public expenditure, revenue and domestic borrowing in Ethiopia. It departs from the existing literature by using a unique quarterly fiscal dataset (1993-2008) and providing new insights into the formulation of testable fiscal hypotheses. The paper also derives and ...

This paper assesses the aid-development nexus in 52 African countries using updated data (1996-2010) and a new indicator of human development (adjusted for inequality). The effects of Total Net Official Development Assistance (NODA), NODA from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and NODA from Multilateral donors on economic prosperity (at national and per capita levels) are also examined...

Exploiting the historical variations in the structure of the international co ee bean market, I separately identify the e ects of an international cartel agreement and the emergence of a fringe exporting country on the market power and the commodity's price. The results suggest that, of the 75-percent drop in the real co ee price between 1988 and 2001, the cartel's breakdown explains 49 points ...