The typical identification strategy in aid effectiveness studies assumes donor motives do not influence the impact of aid on growth. We call this homogeneity assumption into question, first constructing a model in which donor motives matter and then testing the assumption empirically. -- Aid ;...

This paper examines fungibility as a possible explanation for the "missing link" between foreign aid and economic growth. The composition of aid plays a crucial role in determining the composition of government spending and, consequently, the magnitude of fungibility and its impact on growth....

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...

Various development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the...

The most basic economic theory suggests that rising incomes in developing countries will deter emigration from those countries, an idea that captivates policymakers in international aid and trade diplomacy. A lengthy literature and recent data suggest something quite different: that over the...

This paper evaluates the effect of development project aid from the World Bank and China on firms' sales growth, using a large dataset of 110864 firms spanning 121 countries between 2001 and 2016. We find that, contrary to the World Bank, Chinese ODA projects increase, on average, firm sales...

In 2022, governments around the world committed USD 211 bn. to official development assistance. Despite these high contributions, systematic assessments of the determinants of success - or failure - of development aid projects remain limited, particularly for bilateral development aid. This...