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...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...

We examine whether and under which circumstances World Bank projects and IMF programs affect the likelihood of major government crises. Using a sample of more than 90 developing countries over the period 1970-2002, we find that crises are on average more likely as a consequence of Bank and Fund...

By reallocating aid to where it is needed most and where a productive use is most likely, donors could help alleviate poverty in developing countries. The rhetoric of donors suggests that this insight has increasingly shaped the allocation of aid. We assess the poverty and policy orientation of...

In this paper, we perform a Tobit analysis of aid allocations, covering the period 1999-2002 and accounting for both altruistic and selfish donor motives. We first compare the allocative behavior of all bilateral donors taken together with that of multilateral aid agencies, and then look at nine...