Aid Reduction and Local Civil Society: Causes,Comparisons, and Consequences

Questions about aid reduction and its implications are crucial to understanding the future of civil society in many low- and middle-income countries and in post-conflict states. Local civil society in these contexts is often heavily influenced by foreign donors. This article provides an introduction to this theme issue about aid reduction and local civil society. The objective of the introduction and issue articles is to examine the causes of aid reduction and donor withdrawal, the impacts on local civil society organizations (CSOs), and any resulting change in local civil society. We ask: What are the global trends in aid reduction? What impacts does aid reduction have on local CSOs? How do local CSOs respond and adapt? The contributions in this issue demonstrate that aid reduction is indeed global in scale and that impacts and adaptations are often strikingly similar across countries and regions. These similarities form the basis for building new theory but also prompt new questions about the global effects of aid on civil society.     

Reza Hasmath and Jennifer Y. J. Hsu (eds.): NGO Governance and Management in China

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Declining Share of Small Firms in U.S. Output: Causes and Consequences

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model, with large and small firms, to examine possible causes and welfare implications of a declining trend in small firms' share of U.S. output since 1958. Numerical experiments indicate that recent technological advances and government tiering policies that have reduced fixed setup costs of production benefit the emergence of small firms, but lower their output share due to competition for resources among firms. However, this outcome is welfare improving. Therefore, if the policy objective is to raise small firms' output share and economic welfare simultaneously, it is desirable to concentrate on increasing antitrust and deregulatory efforts.     

Families in Poverty in the 1990s: Trends,Causes, Consequences,and Lessons Learned

During the 1990s, poverty rates in the United States remained relatively stable despite a robust economy in which unemployment and inflation were at their lowest points in many years. Approximately 13% of individuals, 11% of families, and 19% of children lived below the poverty line in 1998, a decline of only 1% or less for each of these categories since 1990. These high rates of poverty result in many severe consequences. This essay reviews the research and theoretical and conceptual developments during the past decade, including: (a) a background on how the poverty line was developed; (b) general research themes in the 1990s; (c) the causes of the virtually unchanged poverty rate; (d) the consequences of poverty, particularly for children; and (e) the lessons we have learned from research over the past decade, with some directions for the future.