As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

We empirically study the role of different family policies in determining womenś labor market behavior in the countries of the European Union between 1997 and 2008. Women tend to assume more family duties than men and, consequently, often participate less in the labor market. At the same time,...

We analyze the drivers of presence (size of audience) and participation (number of questions asked) in parallel sessions at a large economics conference, using the annual meeting of the German Economics Association in 2012 as a case study. We find that the location of the presentation is at...

We investigate whether temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, using panel data for 191 countries over the period 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary UN Security Council membership and participation in...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (e.g., the IMF) and a country has for optimal (conditional) reform design. The main result is that the informational advantage of the country must be strictly greater than the advantage of the multilateral in order...

Using the KOF Index of Globalization and two indices of economic freedom, we empirically analyze whether globalization and economic liberalization affect governments ́respect for human rights using a panel of 106 countries over the 1981-2004 period. According to our results, physical integrity...

We argue that membership in International Organizations (IOs) is an important determinant of FDI inflows. To the extent that membership restricts a country from pursuing policies that are harmful to investors, it can signal low political risk. Using data over the 1971-2005 period, we find that...

Performance-based aid has been proposed as an alternative to the failed traditional approach whereby donors make aid conditional on the reform promises of recipient countries. However, hardly any empirical evidence exists on whether ex post rewards are effective in inducing reforms. We attempt...

We investigate whether elected members of the United Nations Security Council receive favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), analyzing panel data on the level of conditionality attached to (a maximum of) 314 IMF arrangements with 101 countries over the period of 1992 to...

We analyze the spread of policies dealing with international trafficking in human beings. Arguing that countries are unlikely to make independent choices, we identify pressure, externalities and learning or emulation as plausible diffusion mechanisms for spatial dependence in anti-trafficking...