Uncertainty of aid inflows and the growth relationship

This paper contributes to the literature on aid and economic growth. We posit that it is not the levei of aid flows per se but the stability of such flows that determines the impact of aid on economic growth. Three measures of aid instability are employed. One is a simple deviation from trend, and measures overall instability. The other measures are based on auto-regressive estimates to capture deviations from an expected trend. These measures are intended to proxy for uncertainty in aid receipts. We posit that such uncertainty will influence the relationship between aid and investment and how recipient governments respond to aid, and will therefore affect how aid impacts on growth. We estimate a standard cross-country growth regression including the leveI of aid, and find aid to be insignificant (in line with other results in the literature). We then introduce measures of instability. Aid remains insignificant when we account for overall instability. However, when we account for uncertainty (which is negative and significant), we find that aid has a significant positive effect on growth. We conduct stability tests that show that the significance of aid is largely due to its effect on the volume of investment. The finding that uncertainty of aid receipts reduces the effectiveness of aid is robust. When we control for this, aid appears to have a significant positive influence on growth. When the regression is estimated for the sub-sample of African countries these findings hold, although the effectiveness of aid appears weaker than for the full sample.

Political budget cycles in a fiscal federation : the effect of partisan voluntary transfers

This article first presents an econometric study suggesting that intergovernmental transfers to Brazilian municipalities are strongly partisan motivated. In light of that stylized fact, it develops an extension to Rogoff (1990)’s model to analyze the effect of partisan motivated transfers into sub-national electoral and fiscal equilibria. The main finding is that important partisan transfers may undo the positive selection aspect of political budget cycles. Indeed, partisan transfers may, on one hand, eliminate the political budget cycle, solving a moral hazard problem, but, on the other hand, they may retain an incompetent incumbent in office, bringing about an adverse selection problem.

Coffee voluntary standards systems a study of the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo

In order to adapt to new markets, the coffee supply chain has gone through numerous changes during the last years, which led to the creation of the voluntary standard systems. Adopting a Voluntary Standard System (VSS) consists of becoming a member of a certifier or verifier, in which an independent third party sets specific criteria to ensure a product complies with standards. Yet, the segment is still relatively new and raises some doubts about the economic and financial advantages of investing in sustainability-related certification. This study analyzes the perception of coffee producers about VSS – whether it brings economic benefits. The literature review covers various VSS in the coffee sector, the brief history of the commodity in Brazil, as well as the description of the supply chain. Certified and non-certified producers in the States of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, answered questionnaires to indicate the perceived advantages of certification. The results show that, despite some added value that certification can bestow, the quality is what really matter, since it allows producers to sell the product at higher prices and to gain advantage over competitors.