This paper addresses an apparent lack of economic theory in the analysis of multilateral development bank (MDB) behavior. A simple comparative statics model that is adapted from the credit union literature is used to predict potential areas of conflict, agreement, and indifference between MDB...

This paper shows that donors that maximize relative aid impact spread their budgets across many recipient countries in a unique Nash equilibrium, explaining aid fragmentation. This equilibrium may be inefficient even without fixed costs, and the inefficiency increases in the equality of donors'...

The IMF attempts to catalyze and stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination,...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent a global commitment to improve economic and social conditions in low-income countries. Capacity building is key to promoting higher economic growth, which, in turn, is an important prerequisite for making progress toward the MDGs. This paper uses...

This paper examines the volume and distribution of concessional and nonconcessional financial flows from Arab countries, and aid agencies, and regional institutions to developing countries. Arab financial assistance increased very rapidly from 1973 to 1980 in line with the rapid growth in oil...

Cross-border bank lending is a growing source of external finance in developing countries and could play a key role for infrastructure financing. This paper looks at the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs) on the terms of syndicated loan deals, focusing on loan pricing. The results...

We use loan-level data on syndicated lending to a large sample of developing countries between 1993 and 2017 to estimate the mobilization effects of multilateral development banks (MDBs), controlling for a large set of fixed effects. We find evidence of positive and significant direct and...