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...

This paper examines the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. To establish a causal relationship, we exploit time variation in food aid caused by fluctuations in U.S. wheat production together with cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any food aid...

Many community organizations provide services similar to government programs, but there is limited evidence how increased government aid affects the use and availability of charitable services. This study examines how greater access to federal nutrition assistance through schoolwide free meal...

Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and...

Conventional trade theory, which combines the Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, implies that expanded trade between developed and developing countries will increase wage inequality in the developed countries. This theory is widely applied. It serves as the basis for...

It is often argued that the globalization of production places workers in industrialized countries in competition with their counterparts in low wage countries. We examine a firm-level panel of foreign manufacturing affiliates owned by U.S. multinationals between 1983 and 1992 and find evidence...

The major theme of this paper is that the commercial banks have weathered the debt crisis, while many debtor countries remain in economic paralysis or worse. There is a growing consensus that much of the LDC debt will not be fully serviced in the future, and that consensus is reflected in at...

This paper examines changes since the early 1960s in the export shares of the United States and its major competitors in the markets of the developing countries of the Asian Pacific Rim (APR), defined to include Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia,...

China's rising presence in international finance, which has long lagged behind its prominence in international trade, is now reshaping global financial dynamics. Using a large sample of developing countries, this paper documents that countries more reliant on China's lending are less exposed to...

Poverty is strongly associated with worse health across countries and within countries across individuals. However, not all poor individuals suffer from poor health: the effects of poverty on health vary across place and time. In this review, we discuss the evidence documenting these patterns,...