The benefits of development aid have been increasingly called into question in recent times. In such aid superfluous or indeed harmful? Ulrich Hiemenz and Franz Nuscheler address this issue in the following two contributions.

The authors try to test statistically whether the flow of resources between poor and rich countries has in fact conformed to the “1 per cent” target defined by the United Nations. Basis for testing several hypotheses are data published by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD.