Previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country. We estimate Tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need, recipient merit and self-interest of donors for various channels of official and private German aid across a...

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...

We investigate the importance of geo-strategic and commercial motives for the allocation of German aid to 138 countries over the 1973-2010 period. We find that geo-strategic and – less robustly – commercial motives matter. When we relate geo-strategic and commercial motives to the political...

Germany's role in financing economic development in Asia on a sustainable basis leaves much to be desired. Direct investors are still underrepresented in the region. Commercial banks have fueled speculative bubbles. Official development financing does not appear to be based on efficiency-related...