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...

It is widely believed that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has grossly fallen short of high expectations raised by the Bush administration in 2002. From the perspective of potential recipient countries, the crucial issue is whether the MCC increased the overall pool of aid resources...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

Using a new dataset for 41 German non-governmental organizations (NGOs), we analyze the allocation of NGO aid across recipient countries in a Tobit regression framework. By identifying for each NGO the degree of public refinancing, we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial...

Major DAC donors are widely criticized for weak targeting of aid, selfish aid motives and insufficient coordination. The emergence of an increasing number of new donors may further complicate the coordination of international aid efforts. On the other hand, new donors (many of which were aid...