An edited collection on foreign aid that addresses important aid questions, and reviews the shifting aid landscape in light of the recent global financial crisis. The volume reviews the progress achieved so far, identifies the challenges ahead, and discusses the emerging policy agenda in foreign aid.

It would be fair to say that foreign aid today is one of the most important factors in international relations and in the national economy of many countries – as well as one of the most researched fields in economics. Although much has been written on the subject of foreign aid, this book contributes by taking stock of knowledge in the field, with chapters summarizing long-standing debates as well as the latest advances. Several contributions provide new analytical insights or empirical evidence on different aspects of aid, including how aid may be linked to trade and the motives for aid giving. As a whole, the book demonstrates how researchers have dealt with increasingly complex issues over time – both theoretical and empirical – on the allocation, impact, and efficacy of aid, with aid policies placed at the center of the discussion. In addition to students, academics, researchers, and policymakers involved in development economics and foreign aid, this Handbook will appeal to all those interested in development issues and international policies.

When recipients cannot absorb the aid and attention they are offered, the common response is “capacity building”—as if the source of the problem is the recipient’s implementation capacity. In this report, Robert D. Lamb and Kathryn Mixon present the results of their research on the sources of absorptive capacity. They find that this sort of “blaming the victim” mentality, while common, is not always justified. While it is true that many aid recipients do not have adequate capacity for implementation, it is equally true that many aid programs are designed and implemented without an adequate appreciation of local desires, resources, capabilities, and challenges. Absorptive capacity, in other words, is a byproduct of the donor-recipient relationship. The authors present a new framework for measuring absorptive capacity. This framework is intended to supplement existing planning, monitoring, and evaluation processes, offering a new way to test whether an existing approach is compatible with local conditions and a method for improving the fit.

This book addresses topical development issues in India, ranging from land acquisition, poverty alleviation programs, labor market issues, the public-private partnership (PPP) model and fiscal federalism. It offers an Indian perspective on the dynamics of economic development and the impact the country’s legal and public policies have on it. Economic development is a dynamic concept – old problems are solved, while at the same time new issues come to the fore. The emergence of these issues is unique to the development experience of an economy. The book includes sixteen recent contributions and is divided into four sections: law and contract; trade and foreign aid; issues in public economics; and the social sector and poverty alleviation. The chapters reflect on a number of development issues which were of concern for India in the recent past and will be important in her future development initiatives such as land acquisition, agricultural productivity, employment, protection of intellectual property rights, corruption, public-private partnership, regional development, poverty alleviations programs like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the training of self-help group members, health and education of women, to name a few. The book is a valuable reference resource for policy practitioners and researchers working on the economics of development with special focus on developing economies.

Foreign aid is now a $100bn business and is expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all? Other attempts to answer these important questions have been dominated by a focus on the impact of official aid provided by governments. But today possibly as much as 30 percent of aid is provided by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and over 10 percent is provided as emergency assistance. In this first-ever attempt to provide an overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell presents a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all. Does Foreign Aid Really Work? sets out the evidence and exposes the instances where aid has failed and explains why. The book also examines the way that politics distorts aid, and disentangles the moral and ethical assumptions that lie behind the belief that aid does good. The book concludes by detailing the practical ways that aid needs to change if it is to be the effective force for good that its providers claim it is.

Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation is the first book to advocate the virtues of a long-term perspective for policy evaluation as well as to show how evaluations can take a longer time perspective than they usually do. To get there, it is necessary to understand the decision-making context of evaluations and study the obstacles and the resistance toward long-term perspectives – as knowledge of that will lay the ground for more effective advocacy. The book is divided into three parts: the first section examines different aspects of methodology and methods. In the next section, authors present case studies of long-term evaluations, examine their own experiences of such evaluations and discuss difficulties, challenges and lessons learned. Cases discussed include: education sector reforms in Sweden, local governance reforms in Denmark, policy interventions in Southern Italy and Brazil, and Paris Declaration Principles of aid effectiveness such as Swedish aid to Tanzania, Vietnam, Laos and Sri Lanka. Finally, the third section sees the authors turn to a set of contextual issues and concluding remarks. Bringing together a rich collection of insights and a renowned group of experts, Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation: Increasing Relevance and Utility, constitutes a significant landmark in the field.