Using panel data for the period 1995-2008, we model the aid allocation decisions of the three largest official donors of humanitarian aid: the United States government, the United Kingdom government and the European Commission. We find evidence that donor decisions depend on both the recipient's need and the donor's economic interest, but with marked asymmetries...

Time series analyses generally rely on having a relatively high frequency of consistent and reliable data to work with. However for many of the South Pacific Island Nations (SPINS), data on major macroeconomic series, like GDP, are typically available only annually from the early 1980s. This paper empirically estimates quarterly GDP data from annual series...

The impact of aid inflows on relative prices and output is ambiguous. Aid inflows that increase domestic expenditure are likely to cause real exchange rate appreciation, ceteris paribus. However, if this expenditure raises the capital stock in the traded goods sector, then output in this sector might not contract, at least in the steady state...

This paper re-kindles the debate on the feasibility of a Pacific Islands currency union in view of the recent expansion and consolidation of regional strategies and agreements such as the 'Pacific Plan' and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus. These initiatives, including past efforts, have given limited consideration to the subject for a...

This paper is a preliminary report on research that is ongoing. Using unit record data from Statistics New Zealand's Income Survey for the June quarters of 1997 to 1999, we estimate wage regressions taking into account the sample selection bias problem which arises from the exclusion from such regressions of those individuals with no market...