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Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of aid often concentrate on short-run Dutch disease effects, ignoring the possible supply-side impact of aidfinanced public expenditure. In the simple model of aid and public expenditure presented here, public infrastructure generates an intertemporal productivity spillover, which may exhibit a sector-specific bias. The model also provides for a learning-by-doing externality, through which total factor productivity in the tradable sector is an increasing function of past export volumes. An extended computable version of this model is used to simulate the effect of a step increase in net aid flows. The simulations show that beyond the short run, when conventional demand-side Dutch disease effects are present, the relationship between enhanced aid flows and real exchange rates, output growth, and welfare is less straightforward than simple models of aid suggest. Public infrastructure investment that generates a productivity bias in favor of nontradable production delivers the largest aggregate return to aid, but at the cost of a deterioration in the income distribution. Income gains accrue predominantly to skilled and unskilled urban households, leaving the rural poor relatively worse off. Under plausible parameterizations of the model, the rural poor may also be worse off in absolute terms. Recent global initiatives on debt relief and development assistance anticipate a significant increase in overall aid flows to the poorest countries and, at least in the medium term, a concentration of these flows on a small number of recipients (e.g.

Background Microdosing psychedelics is the practice of consuming very low, sub-hallucinogenic doses of a psychedelic substance, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or psilocybin-containing mushrooms. According to media reports, microdosing has grown in popularity, yet the scientific literature contains minimal research on this practice. There has been limited reporting on adverse events associated with microdosing, and the experiences of microdosers in community samples have not been categorized. Methods In the present study, we develop a codebook of microdosing benefits and challenges (MDBC) based on the qualitative reports of a real-world sample of 278 microdosers. Results We describe novel findings, both in terms of beneficial outcomes, such as improved mood (26.6%) and focus (14.8%), and in terms of challenging outcomes, such as physiological discomfort (18.0%) and increased anxiety (6.7%). We also show parallels between benefits and drawbacks and discuss the implications of these results. We probe for substance-dependent differences, finding that psilocybin-only users report the benefits of microdosing were more important than other users report. Conclusions These mixed-methods results help summarize and frame the experiences reported by an active microdosing community as high-potential avenues for future scientific research. The MDBC taxonomy reported here informs future research, leveraging participant reports to distil the highest-potential intervention targets so research funding can be efficiently allocated. Microdosing research complements the full-dose literature as clinical treatments are developed and neuropharmacological mechanisms are sought. This framework aims to inform researchers and clinicians as experimental microdosing research begins in earnest in the years to come. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12954-019-0308-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

External aid donors have gradually shifted from a benign view of the African state to one that presumes a con¯ict of interest between the state and its own private sector. What are the implications of this diagnosis for the design of aid programs? We develop a model that locates slow growth in the overly narrow interests of a political elite. We study the impact of aid on policy choice and private investment and the role of conditionality in securing the gains from aid. The results capture key features of the current diagnosis while underscoring the need for more sophisticated treatments of domestic political institutions, institutional change, and donor motivations.

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It has been argued that the institutions of the CFA Franc zone may have reduced in°ation but that they also induced misalignment of the real exchange rate and that this is the explanation for their dismal revenue performance. This paper uses a panel of 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to estimate revenue performance over the period from 1980 to 1996. It¯nds that the poor cumulative relative revenue performance of the franc zone countries is mainly attributable to di®erences in environmental and structural factors, and to their di®erent responses to changes in the equilibrium real exchange rate, but that the misalignment of the real exchange rate also played a part. ¤ This paper draws on earlier work by the authors (Adam et al, 1998) examining revenue productivity over the 1980s. We are grateful to Ludivico Carraro for valuable research assistance and to Steve O'Connell and an anonymous referee for comments on an earlier version of this paper.