In this paper I discuss the effectiveness of foreign aid from a historical perspective. I show that foreign aid is a … relatively new concept in economics, and I emphasize the role of exchange rate policies in the foreign aid controversies of the … 1970s through 1990s. I show that in the early 1980s there were major changes in views regarding aid and agriculture. I …

value-for-money for projects funded by national governments and foreign aid donors. This paper uses policy and experimental …

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a … failed ideas, we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in Africa, with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again …

Critics of foreign aid programs argue that these funds often support corrupt governments and inefficient bureaucracies …. Supporters argue that foreign aid can be used to reward good governments. This paper documents that there is no evidence that … less corrupt governments receive more foreign aid. On the contrary, according to some measures of corruption, more corrupt …

We document that, in rural Uganda, the entry of foreign aid reduces government provision of similar services because … the organization that delivers aid often hires the government worker, thereby reducing state capacity. Access to any …</em> government presence, foreign aid has no effect on state capacity, increases access to any services and improves population well-being …

We examine the supply-side and demand-side determinants of global bilateral food aid shipments between 1971 and 2008 …. First, we find that domestic food production in developing countries is negatively correlated with subsequent food aid … receipts, suggesting that food aid receipt is partly driven by local food shortages. Interestingly, food aid from some of the …

This paper studies the impact of aid volatility in a two-period model where production may occur with either a … modern technology to be used. The possibility of a poverty trap induced by high aid volatility is first examined in a …-period contingency fund) financed through taxation. An increase in aid volatility is shown to raise the optimal contingency fund. But if …

aid on the long-term growth of poor countries, even those with good policies. We look for a possible offset to the … beneficial effects of aid, using a methodology that exploits both cross-country and within-country variation. We find that aid … exchange rate overvaluation caused by aid inflows. By contrast, private-to-private flows like remittances do not seem to create …