China, once a major recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI), has recently become one of the main ‘emerging’ investors, especially in developing countries. Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) plays a very prominent role in economic interaction with many African countries. This paper empirically investigates the determinants of Chinese OFDI versus 41 African countries over the period 1998–2007. The analysis is novel because it provides empirical support to the existing, so far purely anecdotic, evidence describing Chinese FDI to Africa as driven by natural resources endowments and market potential. The econometric analysis highlights strong interrelationships between Chinese FDI and economic cooperation, which make standard models of investments unfit when assessing the role of China in Africa. It also suggests some new lines of research, exploiting the strong links between these different sources of financing.

We empirically analyze the host-country determinants of Chinese outward direct investments (ODI) in the period from 2003 to 2008, using disaggregated data by country and sector and distinguishing between state-owned or controlled enterprises (SOEs) and privately-owned firms. Our results show that the pattern of Chinese ODI differs according to corporate ownership. Private firms are attracted by large markets and host-country strategic assets and are averse to economic and political risks when choosing investment locations abroad. Differently, state-owned or controlled enterprises follow the strategic needs of their home country and invest more in natural resource sectors, being largely indifferent to the political and economic conditions in the host countries.

We explore the impact of FDI and imports on the upgrading of African exports. We find that South–South flows impact differently from North–South ones on the ability of recipients to absorb the positive spillovers. Results support the view that South–South integration has a strong potential for accelerating structural transformation in the continent. South–South FDI foster diversification in key low-tech industries such as agro-industry and textiles, and raise the average quality of manufacturing exports, while importing from the South increases the ability to expand the variety of manufactured exports and to introduce more advanced goods in less-diversified economies.

The Chile Solidario programme is an innovative conditional cash transfer (CCT) in the Latin American context, aimed at addressing specifically the multidimensional nature of poverty. This paper, using data from the Panel Caracterización Socioeconómica Nacional (CASEN) Survey for the years 2001 and 2006, presents an impact evaluation of this programme. Using matching techniques to compare participants in the programme with a control group, and a difference-in-differences estimator, we evaluate its impact on various socioeconomic dimensions and results at the household and child level are differentiated. At the household-level, we find that the programme has a significant impact on lifting families out of extreme poverty and that it does not have disincentive effects on labour participation. For children, we find that it has contributed to increasing participation in school for those between the ages of 6 and 15 years, and to increased enrolment with the public health services