Does aid contribute to development? If so, under what conditions and to what extent? These questions are as old as the field of development policy itself and they have been controversially discussed among researchers and policymakers ever since. Yet, two main trends put questions related to aid...

We evaluate the long-run effects of a decentralized approach to economic development, called community driven development (CDD), a prominent strategy for delivering foreign aid. Notably we revisit a randomized CDD program in Sierra Leone 11 years after launch. We estimate large persistent gains...

France and Germany face common issues in global development policy, including climate change, migration and security. At the same time, their aid is spread across similar countries and sectors. Based on a quantitative overlap measure, the study reveals that the Franco-German overlap of aid...

The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. This paper exploits an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, eligibility for aid from the International Development Association (IDA) has been based partly...