The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to under-saving compared to a world without market or behavioural frictions. Under-saving can have important welfare consequences: variable consumption, low resilience to shocks, and foregone profitable investments. This paper lays ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
Can Development Interventions Help Post-conflict Communities Build Social Cohesion? The Case of the Liberia Millennium Villages
This paper evaluates the efforts of one international development intervention — the Kokoyah Millennium Villages Project (KMVP) — to improve welfare and build social cohesion in post-conflict Liberia. The study is based on a preliminary analysis of survey data from a quasi-experimental, difference-in-differences (DID) research design, and shows that social cohesion was already ...» more
Africa Rising? Popular Dissatisfaction with Economic Management Despite a Decade of Growth
New findings from the Afrobarometer, based on surveys conducted in an unprecedented 34 African countries between October 2011 and June 2013,1 reveal widespread dissatisfaction with current economic conditions despite a decade of strong growth. Africans overwhelmingly reject their governments’ management of their economies, giving failing marks for job creation, improving the ...» more
Trial by Error: Justice in Post-Qadhafi Libya
This paper argues that there are many necessary cures to Libya’s pervasive insecurity, but few more urgent than repairing its judicial system. Qadhafi-era victims, distrusting an apparatus they view as a relic, take matters in their hands; some armed groups, sceptical of the state’s ability to carry out justice, arbitrarily detain, torture or assassinate presumed Qadhafi ...» more
Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2013
This year's GHA Report examines how international assistance has responded to the scale of recent global humanitarian crisis, with sections covering funding (response to need, donors and recipients, areas of expenditure and channels of delivery), recent emergencies, and action to strengthen response. It also features a number of ‘in focus’ reports, each providing an overview of ...» more