With a new development framework under way and an increasingly urgent need to address political, socioeconomic and environmental issues on a global scale, this is a critical moment for the international development agenda. Almost 15 years after the Millennium Declaration, a new phase for...

This Working Paper presents the main findings and recommendations of the pilot study carried out on the treatment of peace and security expenditures in the statistical measure of total official support for sustainable development (TOSSD). The pilot study explored the relevance of including...

Aid allocation studies typically find considerable heterogeneity in donors’ allocation patterns; be it for total Official Development Assistance (ODA) or sector-specific aid. This paper investigates the underlying factors influencing donors’ selection and actual allocation decisions for...

Japan has an impressive history when it comes to aid, industrial policy, and infrastructure development, both as a country that saw meteoric development of its own, and as a country that has been one of the world's largest donors for decades. Looking towards an uncertain future in which...

We focus on an issue that appears particularly relevant for fragile states and which has received little attention: social institutions related to gender inequality, defined as societal practices and legal norms that frame gender roles and the distribution of power between men and women in the...

While it is widely presumed that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in the MDGs differ significantly between fragile and other developing countries, and between...

The gap between strong political commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and slow progress towards meeting them is often attributed to weak “ownership” by developing country governments. This Working Paper addresses the issue of ownership by analysing the substance of 22...