 It's a great pleasure for me to welcome you to this first so-called RECOM results meeting. And having said that, then of course it's natural just to try to spend one second on trying to say, so what is RECOM? RECOM is a joint research documentation and communications initiative initiated in early 2011. It's a partnership involving Danida, CEDA, UNU wider and a series of research collaborators in both the north and the south, including the Danish Institute for International Studies, the African Economic Research Consortium, a number of researchers in Sweden, the African Development Bank, and then I could mention a whole list of institutions involved, as well as a global network of researchers both from east, west, north, and south. It's motivated by our desire, our wish to understand better four key questions about foreign aid. What works, what could work, what's scalable, and what is transferable. The work is organized in five thematic focus areas, growth and employment, governance and fragility, and under that theme we also have issues of freedom, democracy, and human rights, gender equality, environment and climate, and the social sectors. And then poverty is, as it has been always addressed, cross-cutting and also a number of issues related to human development are being addressed throughout. Now in late 2010, I had a slide where I said what were some of the immediate goals that we had identified, and this slide is this one. So we promised that we would get the program set up and underway. We promised that we would initiate a process that would lead to five authoritative overview papers. We promised to set the aid growth discussion straight, and we promised to bring out what can be said about aid's average impact on poverty and other key outcome variables. And then we also promised to move the debate on private sector development and industrial policy forward in a decisive manner. We have gotten quite far on most of these things, but today's focus is the first area of research and aid and growth, and then related to this macroeconomic management. And you might want to ask, well, is that really an important issue? And then I could then speak for quite a long time, but I would just here say, yes, sure it is. For example, for employment, and we are in the process of working towards a second meeting in June where we will be focusing specifically on the employment issue, but there are obviously very close interrelations between growth and employment. But then having said that, it's also clear that there are lots of critical voices out there. It seems as if the evidence is somewhat elusive. The literature seems not to be pointing in one direction. And we quite regularly even speak of a micro-macro paradox, we sort of note that there is quite a bit of positive evidence at the micro-project level that is quite convincing. And then on the other hand, it seems as if the macroeconomists, the macro-development economists that they are sort of arguing that they don't seem to be agreeing what is happening at the macro level. Is it true that the impact of aid sort of evaporates as we move up from the micro to the macro level? Can we say more on balance? This has been a core focus of some of our first work. And let me say here, and let me put that up front, that I do have a prior. Is aid always a waste? I would like to say that relatively up front, that no, absolutely not. I've seen it working. I've seen it working in different countries, in different time periods, with different purposes. I've seen aid saving lives. I've seen aid building infrastructure. I've seen aid helping on putting right institutions in place. So I would like to suggest that the prior that aid works is not just some sort of idealistic belief. It's actually based on quite a broad, empirical background. And when we look to our theories, macro growth theory actually does suggest that one should expect a positive, modest impact. It may not be quite as big as we thought 40, 50 years ago on more simple theory, but it's still there. And when you step back and just look at the big, non-econometric picture out there across the last 50 years, look at that evidence. There are lots of countries that used to get lots of aid that have graduated, that no longer receive aid. There are the Koreas, there are the Indians, Vietnam is still receiving aid, but it will soon stop that. And one of the key debates in the international development community right now is what's going to happen to the international development association and its soft window once a whole range of African countries are graduating. That does not seem to imply that there is no big thing going on out there. And it's my prior that aid has something to do with it. I do also have a second prior. Is some aid wasted? Sure, some aid is wasted. I've seen that happening as well. Development is not easy business. It's complicated. We are bound to make mistakes. And no well-informed individuals think that aid works and is beneficial in all places at all times. But I don't see that as undermining the fundamental case for aid. So we have been pursuing this issue. We've tried very hard to work at coming up with a convincing understanding and we have been really digging deep. Now, why is it so difficult? Of course, aside from the ideological debates which are also associated with this. But it's difficult because data are not as good as one would want to. This is not special for the aid and growth area. This goes for education as well. Economists are discussing even more fiercely the educational data and issues. So this is not something that's just special for this particular area of research. Now, and then there is a key econometric challenge. Attribution is difficult. Why is it difficult? Because when countries improve, when you get more growth and progress, well, they drop out of receiving aid. That's a very important regularity which is there. So it's not that easy to establish causality. How to do it is technically complicated. And there is a key point here which I would like to sort of call attention to. What does lack of statistical significance mean in this context? Well, an insignificant parameter that is absence of evidence, it is not evidence of absence. That's a pretty important point. It sounds a bit technical maybe, but it's really important to remember because it has often been used as evidence of absence. And that's literally wrong. And just because we as macroeconomists have had a hard time at the macro level does not prove that it's not there. And I think I should also highlight that time has been passing by as we will be showing today. And the macro evidence is actually gradually piling up. And we can say and will say quite a bit more today. So when I have finished these welcoming remarks, Channing-Aunt will then focus on what can we say about aid's impact at the aggregate level. Sam Jones will then address the issue of how do we unpack this aggregate impact? How do we try to identify the channels through which that aggregate impact actually comes about? Today, MacCashier will then look to the major literature and take a careful look at what can you say from that perspective. Then Professor Catarina Euseius will then say, OK, we have now looked at what we can say based on cross-country studies and approaches and will then take us through what can be said on time series analysis, referring to 36 studies of African countries. Then Henrik Nielsen from these will look at development interventions, export sectors and the poor so opening up even further to understanding the challenge through which aid works. And Tony Addison will then finish broadening and focusing on macro management of aid and identify some of the key challenges. Sorry, we've been very fortunate that Professor Holger Van Hansen has agreed to serve as moderator today. So once I have finished these opening remarks, Holger will take over and I'm very grateful for that Holger because we are aware that keeping the time and making sure that we proceed in an organized proper way where everybody can have their chance to engage is important. Now if you look to the teaser which was sent out, these are the key questions that we put up there and these key questions are the ones that we will be trying to address today. Why are some countries poor? We will keep in the back of our minds throughout how much aid is there actually out there? Does aid support or harm economic growth and development? What do we know about aid, investment, human capital and poverty reduction and the channels that linking these? Does aid work in Africa? When does aid to export sectors lead to pro-poor growth and what are the challenges in macroeconomic management? Now that's quite a big menu for a morning but I would like to suggest that you take a look as well as some of the background papers that are available on the UNU wider website as well as the D's website and there are copies of overview papers available outside. Aid is diverse, aid is complex, no single person can encompass it all. That's why we are trying to bring together in recon the consolidated wisdom of lots of people, lots of institutions, lots of people in the global network both from the research and the policy perspective. This is a core objective of the program as well and with this I would like to say welcome all and I hope that we can have both inspiring and fruitful morning bringing out what we have learned so far in this first results meeting. Thank you and over to Holger and then Chiang.