IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdi/wpaper/759.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Macro vulnerability in low income countries and aid responses

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick GUILLAUMONT

    (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International(CERDI))

Abstract

Macro vulnerability of the poor countries, an increasing concern of the international community, is analyzed as the risk that their development be hampered by the shocks they face, natural or external. Structural vulnerability mainly results from the size of the shocks and the exposure to the shocks, while general vulnerability also depends on resilience, mainly determined by policy. We first explain how, through instability, vulnerability affects growth and development, arguing four main points. The ex post effects are at least as important as the ex ante or risk effects. Instability affects productivity growth rather more than the level of investment. Primary or exogeneous instabilities lower growth through intermediate and policy related instabilities. Instability also increases the level of poverty (and child mortality), beyond its effects through the rate of growth. Second we examine how, for operational purposes, a synthetic measure of structural vulnerability can be obtained in an Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI), as that developed at the UN. The components of such a structural vulnerability indicator should be related both to the size of the natural and external shocks and to the exposure to these shocks. They should be averaged so that to reflect the interaction between shocks and exposure. The last part considers the implications for aid policy of the macro vulnerability of poor countries. It relies on the view that aid dampens consequences of vulnerability (i.e. vulnerability increases aid effectiveness) and that the aid volatility issue must be reexamined with this regard. Three aid responses are considered. Vulnerability (EVI) can be used as a criterion for aid allocation. Aid can be also designed as an insurance, if it can be disbursed quickly and effectively. Finally, but difficultly, aid can be oriented to contribute to the long-term reduction of vulnerability

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2005. "Macro vulnerability in low income countries and aid responses," Working Papers 200530, CERDI.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdi:wpaper:759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2005/2005.30.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catherine KORACHAIS & Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2008. "When unstable, growth is less pro poor," Working Papers 200827, CERDI.
    2. Lisa Chauvet & Patrick Guillaumont, 2009. "Aid, Volatility, and Growth Again: When Aid Volatility Matters and When it Does Not," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 452-463, August.
    3. Patrick Guillaumont & Laurent Wagner, 2014. "Aid Effectiveness for Poverty Reduction: Lessons from Cross‑country Analyses, with a Special Focus on Vulnerable Countries," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(HS01), pages 217-261.
    4. Lisa Chauvet & Marin Ferry & Patrick Guillaumont & Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney & Sampawende J.-A. Tapsoba & Laurent Wagner, 2019. "Volatility widens inequality. Could aid and remittances help?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 155(1), pages 71-104, February.
    5. Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2009. "World Crisis and Protecting Low-Income Countries Against Exogenous Shocks," Working Papers P06, FERDI.
    6. Patrick GUILLAUMONT & Sylviane GUILLAUMONT JEANNENEY, 2009. "State fragility and economic vulnerability: What is measured and why?," Working Papers P07, FERDI.
    7. Francesco Aiello, 2009. "Experiences With Traditional Compensatory Finance Schemes And Lessons From Flex," Working Papers 200912, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    8. Daniel Cohen & Hélène Djoufelkit-Cottenet & Pierre Jacquet & Cécile Valadier, 2008. "Lending to the Poorest Countries: A New Counter-Cyclical Debt Instrument," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 269, OECD Publishing.
    9. Aiello, Francesco Aiello, 2010. "Experiences with Traditional Compensatory Finance Scheme and Lessons from FLEX - Esperienze dei tradizionali sistemi di compensazione finanziaria e lezioni dal caso FLEX," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 63(1), pages 1-52.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdi:wpaper:759. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vincent Mazenod (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceauvfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.