North-South Free Trade Agreements are supposed to improve African countries' access to competitive inputs and consumer goods, to assist in creating an enabling trading environment and to help to improve the competitiveness of domestic companies by involving them in international networks. Negative effects such as revenue losses and trade diversion are meant to be offset by safeguard measures, technical assistance, and economic growth. The effects of a free trade agreement between the EU and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries, especially relating to export performance, diversification efforts, industrialisation options and efforts for deeper regional integration, are the major questions the study addresses. In studying sector examples in the SACU countries for successful industrial policy, an investigation is undertaken of how a free trade agreement between the EU and the SACU countries affects domestic policies, economic performance and the position of sectors in the global value chain. The conclusion drawn is that free trade agreements concluded between the EU and southern African countries failed to be development-oriented. Subsequently, policy recommendations are made as to how EU policies towards southern Africa can take industrial development, export diversification and a move towards deeper regional integration better into account.

Evaluation pro-poor growth enhancing investments in infrastructure and rural development requires comprehensive appraisal tools. Traditional methods have taken a project or sector perspective that did not capture economy-wide effects. However, in addition to inter-sectoral effects, large-scale investments can also have long-term impacts on national capital formation, the government budget and the foreign trade balance. This study builds a computable general equilibrium model and links it to a micro-accounting module for poverty analysis in Vietnam. The spatial dimension is captured by incorporating two regions into the model: the lagging mountainous province of Son La is compared to the rest of Vietnam. This model is applied to several infrastructure investments and identifies economic growth rates that would be needed to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal.

Hunger and malnutrition are the plight of millions of people, especially in developing countries. This study argues that the lack of a comprehensive measure for nutrition and food security has impeded progress towards eradicating hunger and undernutrition. The author seeks to fill this gap by designing an international Nutrition Index (NI). Using this NI, the study ranks 106 countries and analyses patterns and trends in their nutrition situation. The correlations between the NI and other international indicators show its ability to reflect micronutrient deficiencies as well as its sensitivity to poverty and inequality. Multivariate regressions reveal that the NI tends to improve with economic development and the amelioration of health services, whereas warfare has detrimental effects.

The author presents a promising tool to increase the coverage rate of community-based health insurance schemes (CBHI) and access to medical care for poor population groups in developing countries. He addresses a key problem of CBHI: Authorities cannot sanction non-members and membership cannot be enforced. Therefore, it is proposed to award membership by offering incentives such as raffle participation for joining a CBHI. This approach attracts new members and can be a motivation to continue membership payments of healthy insurance members. The results of an ex-ante demand analysis conducted in the Philippines are promising. More than 80% of the respondents would like to participate in the raffle and would even agree to higher premium payments covering additional costs of the raffle.

The growing recognition of the potential of local institutions to assure the sustainability of natural resources has motivated the devolution of the management and responsibility over local commons from the state to local user groups. In Ghana, farmer management of irrigation systems has become an important component of policies for irrigation development and reform. While numerous examples of successful local irrigation management exist in different parts of the world, there are several cases of failure that sometimes lead to a complete system breakdown. Using a dataset from community managed irrigation schemes in northern Ghana, this study examines the reasons why communities differ in terms of economic, distributional and environmental outcomes of the devolution program. Among others, the study finds the resistance of landlords to a land redistribution policy to have a detrimental effect on the success of collective action for local management of the irrigation schemes. The ability of the user groups to tackle local asymmetries for promoting equity and forming appropriate institutions to motivate cooperative behavior is essential for achieving sustainable local management of the irrigation schemes.