This paper assesses biofuels technology readiness and provides foresight to biofuels development in Southern Africa. Efficient conversion pathways, coupled with biomass from waste or high-yielding energy crops, reduces both the costs of biofuels production and the environmental impacts....

The global transition towards sustainable, secure, and affordable electricity supply is driving changes in the consumption, production, and transportation of electricity. This paper shows the different policy aims that are promoted with smart grids in Europe, the United States, and China. In all...

The policy advice given by economists in international institutions is influenced by their prior academic work. In my case, applied general equilibrium work resulted both in a belief in the necessity of decentralized markets and in a distrust of their ability to be stable. A career in...

This study presents new empirical results, using microdata from the LIS database, on development patterns in economic inequality for a set of countries that are less covered in the empirical literature, mostly due to the lack of appropriate data. After discussing the main challenges when...

The foreign aid landscape has undergone a paradigm shift in the last few decades, with changes in the behaviour of 'traditional' donors and a new focus on selectivity in aid disbursement, as well as 'new' donors and South-South co-operation playing an increasingly important role. Amidst these...

Malawi confronts a development imperative in a context of rising temperatures and deep uncertainty about precipitation trends. We evaluate the implications of climate change for overall growth and development prospects to 2050. We focus on three impact channels: agriculture, road infrastructure,...

The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial flows, and falling remittances. This is the...

This paper examines the income inequality implications of a 'premature deindustrialization' trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and value-added share of manufacture. Among these five...

In the context of falls in extractive commodities prices since 2011, this paper examines the history of thinking about the interplay between extractives and economic development. Just as 'the resource curse' fails as a generic explanation on account of the huge diversity in country contexts, so...