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Provided for over 60 years, and expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation, foreign aid is now a $100bn business. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all? In this first-ever, overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell provides a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all.
Discusses how to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid, proposing practical solutions to specific problems rather than a utopian master plan. This work also includes writers who look at scientific evaluation of aid projects and describe projects found to be cost-effective, including vaccine delivery and HIV education.
This book is the second of two volumes which highlight the concept of financial inclusion from the Islamic perspective. An important element of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), financial inclusion has been given significant prominence in reform and development agendas proposed by the United Nations and G-20. The significance of Islamic financial inclusion goes beyond improved access to finance to encompass enhanced access to savings and risk mitigation products, as well as social inclusion that allows individuals and companies to engage more actively in the real economy. It represents one of the important drivers of economic growth. This volume explores the financial risks associated with lending to low-income groups due to high poverty levels and the lack of collateralization mechanisms. The first book on the market to provide empirical evidence of Islamic microfinance, deposit insurance and micro-entrepreneurship through the analysis of models and country case studies, this edited collection will be of value to those researching development finance, financial inclusion and Islamic finance.
Although a number of selected African countries have made efforts to implement various financial sector reforms, many countries have not fully implemented the requisite reforms required for sustainable development. Instead, they have focused mainly on bank-based financial reforms, thereby neglecting market-based financial reforms. This study provides a one-stop shop for understanding the history and evolution of the financial sector in Africa with a special focus on the sub-Saharan region where the financial system in many countries is still at a relatively nascent stage. The analysis is extensive and robust, and starts from financial repression to financial liberalisation (both internal and...
This book develops a theoretical framework unlike the conventional neoclassical paradigm for the analysis of growth and deploys analytical data to understand the main policy issues affecting developing countries, with particular attention to countries which, after having a spurt of growth, have been unable to maintain the momentum of their economies. One of the guiding ideas of the book is that each one of these countries has its own middle-income trap. The book focuses the discussion on growth and development around the specific characteristics of these countries and the constraints they face to achieve rapid growth. The book offers the building blocks for an integrated approach to developm...
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a driving force of the global economy, contributing up to 50% of gross domestic product in some instances. They also contribute to economic development through various channels such as employment creation, economic growth and poverty reduction, key elements of the Sustainable Development Goals. Furthermore, in many economies the majority of jobs are provided by SMEs. However, despite their support of the economy, SMEs are prone to several binding constraints, such as access to finance and market entry, as well as exogenous shocks and crises, most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on evidence from international experience, SMEs and Economic...
The economic and social development that Bangladesh has achieved in the past two decades has made Bangladesh a development paradox. This book tries to explain this paradox through a political economy lens. The book explains the linkages between the state, changing society and emerging private sector, and examines whether the social transformation taking place in Bangladesh has the potential to live up to the expectations of a middle- income country. The early part of the book unravels the myriad relations between the state, society and market to project the aspirations of a newly independent nation. It analyzes how political turmoil, militarization of politics, politicization of institutions...
This book offers an economic history of the Cuban revolution between 1959 and 2019, with a focus on the period that ranges between 2008 and 2018. It aims to explain in a historical perspective the Cuban economic challenges through the category of ‘peripheral socialism’. The core of the research is the administration of Raúl Castro and the economic and social reforms introduced by it under the concept of socialism update. The book describes Cuba’s recent economic policies and analyses the structure and dynamics of Cuba’s economic changes, offering a panoramic view which can serve as an introduction to further more detailed analyses. The book also offers an interpretation of Cuba’s ...
This book provides empirical insights into the relationship between capital and equity-ownership structure of Indian manufacturing companies and their financial performance. It discusses and analyses the basic theories and concepts associated with capital structure, debt financing, levered and unlevered firms, the various forms of ownership, agency problem and its kind and the exploitation of minority owners by the large and largest owners. The study employs a set of the most reliable and suitable econometric estimation techniques to draw meaningful inferences on the Indian manufacturing sector. The novelty of this book lies in three particular aspects: the depth and dimension with which the...
Most books on happiness are concerned with answering, in their diverse ways, a basic question: how should I live? Such books assume, however, that the path to happiness lies entirely within one’s control. Happiness is simply a matter of doing certain things and refraining from doing certain other things. This book, however, takes a different view. It is that happiness is not always within our control but, instead, prey to the attitudes and actions of others. Following Jean-Paul Sartre’s aphorism, “hell is other people”, the broad theme of this book is that “unhappiness is other people”. In the language of economics, “other” people, through their attitudes and actions, create ...