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This paper analyses the "arduous and contingent" process of creating the "preconditions" for financialised forms of development in urban Kenya. Building on a growing critical literature on how finance is shaping development in the global South, the paper traces the more‐or‐less concerted effort of an array of actors and intermediaries to create a functioning market for urban water services. Such efforts, which are justified through appeals to a "finance gap" are an attempt to connect capital seeking profitable investment opportunities with a sector long starved of funding. The pursuit of financialised models of water provision, however, is deepening the gulf between service areas that are deemed profitable (or potentially profitable) and those that are not. The paper argues that it is not lack of money, but an emerging system of water service provision which prioritises commercial principles and value extraction, that shapes where investment does (and crucially) does not flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development became a G20 priority under the Korean presidency in 2010 and has remained central to global summitry ever since. Although the G20 has formally involved itself in the post‐2015 process following the St. Petersburg Summit in 2013 and emphasized the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a core priority under Turkey's presidency in 2015, the UN remains the main channel for global negotiations and discussions of the post‐2015 development agenda up to its approval and adoption in September 2015 and will continue to play the leading role in the follow‐up implementation and tracking of SDGs. The present paper argues that as the SDGs come to dominate the agenda and action of donors and issues of financing take central stage, the G20 can play an important role in facilitating the implementation of the SDGs due to its various strengths, although it also faces serious challenges. The paper also points out that as the 2016 G20 chair, China can make great contributions in advancing the implementation of the SDGs both domestically and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds new light on internal migration processes by estimating stylized migration histories for populations in 31 countries. The focus is on repeat migration and on return migration back to rural areas from urban areas. Migration histories are portrayed by introducing migration pathway matrices, representing the shares of the population (by gender) that have moved or stayed in rural and urban areas over three periods (childhood and two forward periods). Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the estimation of national migration pathway matrices was done with an information‐theoretic procedure using maximum‐entropy econometrics to estimate migration frequencies by population groups. Moving multiple times is found to be a consolidated practice in all countries analysed. Sizeable urban‐to‐rural migration flows are found, with rural returnees often contributing substantially to these flows. This phenomenon is more pronounced in countries in relatively early phases of economic development and among male migrants. For the sample of countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, on average, 51% of men and 32% of women migrating from urban to rural areas are return migrants who lived in rural areas as children. Results indicate many migrants move multiple times: In the overall sample of countries, at least 43% of men and 36% of women who move once will move a second time (or more), accounting for nearly 120 million individuals. We find large differences in migration histories across genders, with these differences tending to be smaller for countries that are further along their economic development path and more urbanised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence is being reconfigured as a set of technologies that can address poverty with precision. The impacts of AI will both exacerbate and ameliorate the conditions of uneven development. Recent debates focus on the disruptive effects of AI, particularly to replication of development trajectories that have had success in reducing poverty. In this paper we further these debates by analysing the backroads of AI. The backroads serve as a metaphor for understanding the ways AI will travel from the sites of incubation to the frontlines of uneven development. We explore dialogues between AI and development in two arenas: the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation initiative (DIME) and the Government of India's national AI strategy, #AIforAll. We argue that both these arenas serve as hubs from which AI will travel out along the backroads to remote, poor, and fragmented polities. While the World Bank utilises AI as technology to empower experts and mobilise a techno‐political authority, what we refer to as precision AI, India seeks to function as a second‐tier AI hub, making AI cheaper and more accessible domestically and for other developing countries, what we refer to as populist AI. We conclude by discussing the interrelations of precision and populist AI along the backroads, and the potential of backroads research for mapping AI, uneven geographies of development and technology and the impacts of AI's disruptions at different scales. Artificial intelligence is being reconfigured as a set of technologies that can address poverty with precision. We further these debates by analysing the backroads of AI in two arenas: the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation initiative (DIME) and the Government of India's national AI strategy #AIforAll. While the World Bank utilises AI as technology to empower experts and mobilise a techno‐political authority, what we refer to as precision AI, India seeks to function as a second‐tier AI hub, making AI cheaper and more accessible domestically and for other developing countries, what we refer to as populist AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term peri‐urbanization has been widely used to describe a range of different processes that transform rural areas to a mix of rural and urban spaces. Although there is a burgeoning literature on peri‐urbanization, the conceptual debate about peri‐urbanization's distinction from urbanization is rarely considered. It sometimes seems like whatever occurs at the urban periphery across the global south is labeled peri‐urbanization. This universalizing use of the term risks obscuring the existing diversities of rural‐to‐urban transformations. At the same time, it is empirically clear that the urban periphery of the global south hosts the most dynamic processes of urbanization in the contemporary world. It is also conceptually accepted that to better understand these diverse processes of urbanization, scholars must decenter global urban theory and build new vocabularies and theories from the south. Thus, there is doubt as to whether and to what extent a single concept like peri‐urbanization can capture the great diversity of rural‐to‐urban transformations across the global south. This critical review of the southern geographies of peri‐urbanization first identifies three interrelated conceptual vectors (territorial, functional, and transitional) for understanding the peri‐urban concept, and outlines recent developments in the field. Then, peri‐urbanization is reframed as an umbrella concept, which embraces multiple theoretical concepts and avoids the universalization inherent in much current usage. Finally, the paper reviews recent theoretical inquiries and new vocabularies of urbanization processes at the urban periphery, offering scope to theorize the heterogeneity of the geographies of peri‐urbanization in the global south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) to the global South has increased, but very little research has gone into analysing the diverse FDI flows between unequally related groups of countries. This paper contributes by investigating (a) the distribution of global FDI into and between semi‐peripheral and peripheral countries in the global South (2006–2014), and (b) the country location factors of FDI in these two regions. We introduce a distinction between multinational enterprises from emerging (EMNE) and from peripheral countries (PMNE) and show evidence of their different investment behaviour. Our results uniquely demonstrate intra‐regional investment differences, the increasing sophistication of peripheries as hosts and sources of FDI (developmental undercurrents) and a rich set of location factors explaining FDI into these regions. We also show that EMNEs invest in semi‐peripheral countries so as to benefit from their emerging capacity to innovate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on existing research on the merging of development and security following 9/11. Whilst much of the current literature focuses on the development policy of the US, this paper examines the UK. Investigating arguments that the UK's coordination of security and development policy is concerned with security at home rather than in the developing world, the policy discourse of UK's Department for International Development (DfID), Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Ministry of Defence is examined through its major policy documents for the period from the late 1990s to 2011. Two levels of analysis are used: a content analysis and a discourse analysis. In addition, this research draws on interviews with key informants within the DfID. This paper argues that since 9/11 and the War on Terror, the UK has increasingly coordinated its foreign policy, development and security actors. As a result, the DfID has given progressively greater attention to issues of national security in its policy. This action is justified through a series of claims of common interest between actors across government and between the interests of developing countries and the UK. This merging of interests opens up space for development to be focused on ensuring UK's national security. Whilst drawing on a paradigm of broader security, this instead reverses the principal of human security where national security is now a development problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the product of a workshop that brought together practitioners, researchers, and data experts to discuss how big data is becoming a resource for positive social change in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We include in our definition of big data sources such as social media data, mobile phone use records, digitally mediated transactions, online news media sources, and administrative records. We argue that there are four main areas where big data has potential for promoting positive social change: advocacy; analysis and prediction; facilitating information exchange; and promoting accountability and transparency. These areas all have particular challenges and possibilities, but there are also issues shared across them, such as open data and privacy concerns. Big data is shaping up to be one of the key battlefields of our time, and the paper argues that this is therefore an opportune moment for civil society groups in particular to become a larger part of the conversation about the use of big data, since questions about the asymmetries of power involved are especially urgent in these uses in LMICs. Civil society groups are also currently underrepresented in debates about privacy and the rights of technology users, which are dominated by corporations, governments and nongovernmental organizations in the Global North. We conclude by offering some lessons drawn from a number of case studies that represent the current state-of-the-art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing complexity and visibility of financial capital and processes in the global economy and in everyday lives offers both tantalising promise and pitfalls. This review of financialisation in global development develops three key themes: debates and contests over the definition, nature, and extent of financialisation ("what is it"); the erosion within these debates of distinctions between long‐held categories within development – between intentional and immanent, or "big D" and "little d" development, for example; and an exploration of how financialisation has drawn attention to more complex understandings and analyses of risk and its implications for the global economy and everyday lives in the Global South. Drawing on material from the Pacific and situating this alongside existing literature, this review uses these themes to argue that while there is much that is new in the nuance of these processes, there is nothing inherently emancipatory in the new technologies of financialisation. And the often heralded "democratisation of finance" that it represents often serves to extend the reach of capitalism and ties individuals, households, and communities more tightly into the global circuits and structures of capital. These processes themselves though are rarely uncontested, and the plethora of forms they assume reflect localised conditions, geographies, and forms of agency. Development and aid are being increasingly financialised as new financial institutions and products permeate into the developments sector. This process has profound implications for the way we understand new configurations of development and the way risk is reconstituted as a financial commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the emerging literature investigating agglomeration externalities in developing countries and focuses on the less studied differences between the formal and the informal sector. Using establishment‐level data and instrumental variable estimations, we find that both formal and informal establishments benefit from agglomeration externalities. We provide evidence that informal establishment total factor productivity (TFP) increases more with city size than formal establishment TFP. We also provide causal evidence on the source of agglomeration externalities by formality status by examining industry coagglomeration pairs and instrumenting with data on Columbian input–output and labor industry–pair relationships. We find little evidence of benefits from stronger input–output relationships at the city level, but substantial benefits associated with shared labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growth of the sector, microfinance's academic research in developed countries is still very limited. The paper builds on earlier works, which discuss four technical problems related to the diffusion of microfinance in developing countries. In re-framing their approach to apply it to developed countries, we propose a set of recommendations in order to foster the growth of the microfinance sector: (1) the use of financial institutions to supply microfinance products; (2) the development of an alternative credit scoring in banks; (3) the adoption of a regulatory framework for microfinance; and (4) the use of networks as social collaterals. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With the flagship success of m‐Pesa, financial services via mobile devices have become an important tool to facilitate the financial inclusion of the previously unbanked population in developing countries. Attempts to provide a landscape of academic research findings at the intersection of mobile financial services, financial inclusion, and development have been rather scant. To determine the key issues and gaps in the current academic research, this study conducts a systematic review of 54 academic research papers vis‐à‐vis the nexus of mobile financial services, financial inclusion, and development. The results show that the extant literature addresses three major clusters of topics: delivery, environmental factors, and the impact of mobile financial services. Still in the nascent stage of research, the topics covered in the literature indicate a bias towards institutional and individual preconditions for the implementation of mobile financial services, rather than actual supply and demand by users, and its impact on society. The choice of research methods also shows limited variety and depth. This study contributes towards understanding the existing research on mobile financial services for financial inclusion in developing countries and finding research gaps for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of flooding on socioeconomic outcomes have become a global concern for governments, policymakers, and international organizations alike. The situation is particularly challenging in developing nations where poor communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding. Consequently, this study investigated the impact of flooding on poor communities and poverty levels in Africa with particular reference to the Makoko community in Lagos State, South‐West Region of Nigeria. A survey design was employed with the collection of data through an environmental structured audio interview questionnaire (ESAIQ). Three Hundred and Fifty‐Eight participants located in the core six district areas of the community took part in the research. The impacts of flooding were found to be negative and a significant impediment to community development. Flooding was found to aggravate poverty levels and negatively impact educational status and community development. This study recommends more community‐based approaches to help raise awareness and support the co‐development of interventions that can help improve resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban bias theory predicts urban areas of developing countries receive disproportionately more resources than rural areas due to their concentration of numerically large, politically important "vote banks." This has not been the case in Bangladesh. This study finds that this variation occurs due to non‐state providers (NSPs) changing the landscape of resource allocation. Operating on the premise that state control leads to more services in urban areas, urban bias fails to account for NSPs as critical service providers. Employing a grounded theory strategy to explore urban‐rural dynamics in service provision and to build on urban bias theory, this research highlights interactions between state and non‐state actors. It argues that spatialized political networks, networks of formal and informal leadership more difficult to access in urban areas, influence the locality of service provision. Though NSPs recognize increased need in urban areas of Bangladesh, their interventions in those areas remain peripheral due to differing structures of government accountability and differing levels of community acceptance facilitating these networks. The need for NSPs to adapt their activities to restrictive governance mechanisms reflects the changing space for NSPs in the context of semi‐democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we review the literature on the creation and diffusion of innovation in the private sectors (industry and services) in developing countries. In particular, we collect evidence on what are the barriers to innovation creation and diffusion and the channels of innovation diffusion to and within developing countries. We find that innovation in developing countries is about creation or adoption of new ideas and technologies; but the capacity for innovation is embedded in and constituted by dynamics between geographical, socio-economic, political and legal subsystems. We contextualize the findings from the review in the current theoretical framework of diffusion of innovations, and we emphasize how the institutional context typical of developing countries impacts the diffusion itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Motivation: Multi‐stakeholder dialogues (MSDs) are a popular tool to promote good governance in the global south, but it remains unclear whether they actually bring about the deeper benefits they are designed to achieve, namely better government responsiveness and higher public confidence in political institutions. Niger is one of the least developed countries in the world and one where citizens consistently report low confidence in government. Purpose: We test the impact of MSDs on government responsiveness and public confidence in political institutions in Niger. Specifically, we test whether MSDs in communes focused on education and health improve relations between citizens and leaders, make processes more representative, and increase resources for local service delivery. We test whether MSDs improve citizen perceptions of government: legitimacy, responsiveness, democracy, and honesty. We test whether they increase citizen participation, including through petitions and messaging. Methods and approach: Randomized controlled trial and surveys. Findings: MSDs had virtually no positive impact on any of the 10 tests we conducted, with no appreciable improvements in local political leadership or in citizen engagement with, and confidence in, the state and its services. The null results may arise from the limited time the MSDs were run, or they may reflect the extremely difficult conditions for better local governance seen in Niger. Policy implications: The findings, though possibly discouraging for policy implementers, provide a valuable opportunity to contemplate how multi‐stakeholder frameworks might be made more effective and whether to prioritize alternative frameworks for democracy and development in countries like Niger. MSDs may be worth continuing in combination with other interventions, or simply in the interest of an inclusive, ethical approach to development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers in developing countries are pressured to present themselves as ideal feminist subjects to international donors. Previous research has highlighted the potential of NGOs to promote and support feminist change, but also the ways in which the agendas of such organizations are shaped by the demands of donors in the global North. Extending the literature on embodiment to investigate NGOs, this article introduces a new aspect of donor demands on NGO work: embodying feminism. Drawing from 30 in‐depth interviews and ethnographic observation in NGOs in Cambodia, I analyze two processes. First, I show how foreign donors demand specific presentations of self from Khmer NGO staff. Second, I analyze the ways in which Khmer employees make sense of these expectations, which require them to change their interaction style, manage their emotions, and transform their esthetic to present themselves as "good feminists" to donors. Documenting an understudied aspect of NGO work, I demonstrate how the visions of feminism and development promoted by international donors make demands on the bodies of Khmer workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional wisdom that developing countries are significantly underinvesting in agricultural research and development (R&D) has been challenged by studies that found that the high rates of return in the literature result from data limitations and inadequate modeling choices. However, evidence of low research effort in developing countries as measured by the intensity ratio (IR)—the percentage of agricultural gross domestic product invested in agricultural R&D—has not been questioned. This article argues that the IR is an inadequate indicator of research effort and proposes an alternative index to measure R&D intensity. Using the proposed index, we find that the investment effort in developing countries is much higher than the one observed when the IR is used, that the contribution of low‐ and middle‐income (LMI) countries to growth in global R&D intensity was higher to that of high‐income (HI) countries in recent years, that the investment gap in LMI countries is close to 50% of R&D investment, and that the proposed development goal of a 1.0% value of the IR is beyond the possibilities of most Asian and African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the lives of Port Moresby women who work in the development sector of Papua New Guinea. In particular, it demonstrates how development discourse structures the very fabric of working relationships within this sector in Port Moresby. Underpinned by neocolonial geographies in which those in the global north rescue those in the global south, these discourses produce workplaces in which Papua New Guinean women are seen as lacking the moral and technical capacities to run development projects in their own country. The article argues that the privileges held by expatriates and denied to local women, in conjunction with the workplace discrimination to which they are subjected, ironically undermine the development sector's supposed commitment to promoting gender equality in Papua New Guinea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aid for Trade initiative was launched by the WTO in 2005 to help developing countries build their supply‐side capacity and trade‐related infrastructure to improve their capacity in the global market. This study investigates the impacts of both the tangible and intangible elements of this initiative on the economic, social and political globalisation of recipient countries. Intangible elements of Aid for Trade (aid for trade policy and regulation) may be considered as the software of Aid for Trade, while tangible elements (aid for economic infrastructure and building productive capacity) are the hardware. Countries that receive Aid for Trade can use both types of elements to succeed in globalisation. This research hypothesises that the tangible elements of Aid for Trade have a singular effect on the overall level of globalisation since they are expected to only increase the level of economic globalisation. Moreover, we expect that the intangible elements of Aid for Trade will have multiple effects on the overall level of globalisation as they have an impact on not only economic aspects but also social and political aspects of it. Using the dataset of Aid for Trade from 2002 to 2015, we find that the intangible elements of Aid for Trade have increased the recipients' level of overall globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, most developing countries have been following market‐oriented liberalising policy reforms and have prioritized private sector‐led growth. Bangladesh's inability to provide quality healthcare services, along with issues pertaining to limited resources, absenteeism, poor governance, and lack of accountability in its public healthcare system have created wide gaps that are increasingly being filled by the private sector. This has been fuelled by the state's investment in medical education and training of public sector physicians while simultaneously permitting them to practice privately, as well as the provision of grants and subsidies. The growth of this sector has limited benefits for the improvement of people's health. The government should take a comprehensive approach and engage its political will to make changes in management and governance and bring in stewardship to revitalise the public sector. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nearly two centuries of lagging behind the industrial countries, growth in many developing countries has surged since the early 1990s. This outperformance has major implications for almost all areas of agricultural economics and, if continued, will likely do so into the future. This article aims to identify the key ways in which the changes in rich and poor country growth rates matter for agricultural economists, as a basis for formulating better research agendas. A key impact arises through sharp increases in demand for agricultural resources as demand for livestock products increases. This changing structure of food demand has important implications for nutrition studies and policies, with the emergence of a double burden of malnutrition. On the supply side, growth in developing countries tends to increase domestic food supply, which is also boosted by increases in research and development spending. Growth in developing countries both stimulates and benefits from increases in infrastructure investment, evaluation of which requires new analytical tools. Negative impacts include the contribution of increased demand for livestock products to global greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of trade policy, growth in developing country is tending to lead to convergence of agricultural policies with the pattern of assistance seen in today's developed countries, raising concerns about the future need to deal with collective action problems, particularly those that increase the volatility of world prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

International development agencies have need of sympathetic interlocutors in developing countries who are receptive to and capable of sustainably implementing global policy norms. This article analyses World Bank technical assistance (TA) as a tool used to stack the policy deck in its favour by identifying and cultivating those government officials receptive to its ideas. Pairing its analysis with the policy mobilities literature, the article considers two questions: how does the World Bank locate receptive actors and how does it socialize new actors into accepting its ideas and practices? Observing the World Bank's four main TA pillars, the article reviews the different strengths and weaknesses of these pillars in garnering domestic support. In critiquing the World Bank's attempts to identify and cultivate sympathetic interlocutors, the article provides new insights into the mechanisms that facilitate the transnational movement of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, Cambodia has experienced an unprecedented credit boom, a growth in lending so rapid that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) referred to it as "one of the fastest financial deepening episodes by historical cross‐cultural standards" (IMF, 2016, p. 4). This deepening has been driven by the expansion of microcredit. In tandem, over‐indebtedness has increased among microcredit borrowers, and debt has become a significant political and economic concern. This article explores how over‐indebtedness is understood and explained by stakeholders across microcredit value chains. To do so, we draw on interviews with microfinance institution (MFI) executives, investors, branch managers, partners, financial literacy trainers, loan officers and borrowers in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. We find that across the sector, dominant framings of over‐indebtedness privilege borrower‐centric explanations, while discounting the structural drivers of excessive lending and borrowing. As a consequence, current efforts to limit over‐indebtedness are unlikely to produce the kinds of solutions that are most needed to reduce the debt stress among borrowers. These arguments have implications across the Global South, particularly for contexts where microfinance is rapidly expanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study uses the ICTD UNU‐WIDER Government Revenue Dataset in order to challenge and extend existing findings on the relationship between tax structures and economic growth, in a panel of 100 countries. The results suggest that, broadly, revenue‐neutral increases in income taxes are associated with lower long‐run GDP growth and that revenue‐neutral reductions in trade taxes have not always had positive effects. Crucially, many of the results presented differ according to income level, calling into question the validity of existing findings for developing countries and suggesting that policy advice on this issue in developing countries should be viewed through a more cautious lens. © 2018 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it possible that education in the Global South leads to emigration and is therefore detrimental to development prospects? For the Pacific Islands region, this issue is particularly pertinent, given the high rates of migration and the strong emphasis placed on education as a basis for development. Although our knowledge of the bilateral relations between, respectively, education and development, education and migration, and migration and development have advanced, we know very little of the complex interplay between the three. In this article, we suggest a new approach to the trilateral relationship among education, migration and development in the Pacific Islands which may have implications beyond that region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International aid architecture has created a space for development experts to operationalise development policies in various capacity. A growing body of literature highlights the agency of this group through an ethnographic lens for deepening the understanding of development practice. However, this article reveals that there is a gap in the existing literature as the roles of national development experts ( NDEs) remain rather unexplored in development. This article aims to bridge this gap by introducing the NDEs as an unexplored actor in development and setting an agenda for further research. Drawing on a Bangladesh case this article argues that not only will the accounts of NDEs deepen the existing scholarship but also without their reflections we will only have partial development ethnographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic theory predicts that a rise in police presence will reduce criminal activity. However several studies in this field have found mixed results. This study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between the size of the police force and crime experienced by firms. Using survey data for about 12,000 firms in a cross-section of 27 developing countries it is found that increasing the size of the police force is negatively associated with crime experienced by firms. Results are confirmed using a panel of firms for a subset of countries for which data are available. It is also found that this negative relationship is stronger under certain macroeconomic circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leadership is an under-studied topic in international development. When the topic is broached it is usually to support what might be called a 'hero dependency': One or other individual is identified as the hero of a past event (or the hero-to-be of a future event). This article argues that this dependency is problematic, however, because (i) heroes have not emerged in many contexts for long periods and individuals who may have been considered heroes in the past often turned out less than heroic, (ii) heroes are at least as much the product of their contexts as they turned out to be the shapers of such, and (iii) stories about hero-leaders doing special things mask the way such special things emerge from the complex interactions of many actors-some important and some mundane. Notions of hero-leadership in development are less convincing when one appreciates these arguments. Referencing broader work on leadership (and some in the development space itself) the article calls development theorists and practitioners to go beyond the heroic leader perspective in thinking about who leads development. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food quality has become an important determinant of success in global food trade and growers for international markets have to continuously adjust to buyers' requirements. It is, however, not clear to what extent there is a demand for food quality-and how much buyers are willing to pay for it-in domestic food markets of developing economies. Based on unique comparable price and trader data in a poor country in Africa (Madagascar) and an emerging economy in Asia (India), we compare food quality and quality's pricing. We find significantly better quality and higher quality premiums (using revealed as well as stated preference methods) in India than in Madagascar. These findings are consistent with a simple theoretical model, solely based on average income gaps between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Several recent studies have identified emerging and near‐commercial process and technological options to transition heavy industry to global net‐zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by mid‐century, as required by the Paris Agreement. To reduce industrial emissions with sufficient speed to meet the Paris goals, this review article argues for the rapid formation of regional and sectoral transition plans, implemented through comprehensive policy packages. These policy packages, which will differ by country, sector, and level of development, must reflect regional capacities, politics, resources, and other key circumstances, and be informed and accepted by the stakeholders who must implement the transition. These packages will likely include a mix of the following mutually reinforcing strategies: reducing and substituting the demand for GHG intense materials (i.e., material efficiency) while raising the quantity and quality of recycling through intentional design and regulation; removal of energy subsidies combined with carbon pricing with competitiveness protection; research and development support for decarbonized production technologies followed by lead markets and subsidized prices during early stage commercialization; sunset policies for older high carbon facilities; electricity, hydrogen and carbon capture, and storage infrastructure planning and support; and finally, supporting institutions, including for a "just workforce & community transition" and monitoring and adjustment of policy effectiveness. Given the paucity of industrial decarbonization perspectives available for in‐transition and less‐developed countries, the review finishes with a discussion of priorities and responsibilities for developed, in‐transition and less developed countries. This article is categorized under:Climate Economics > Economics of MitigationClimate and Development > Decoupling Emissions from Development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]