Development assistance has been criticized for a lack of coordination between aid donors. This paper argues that competition for export markets and political support prevents donor countries from closer coordination of aid activities. To test these hypotheses, we perform logit and fractional...

Developing countries are constrained in financing current account deficits as real capital mobility is still far from perfect. At the same time, capital flows to these countries proved to be extremely volatile. The paper argues that the long-term problem of "too little" should not be confused...

Policymakers in developing countries have increasingly pinned their hopes on bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in order to improve their chances in the worldwide competition for foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the effectiveness of BITs in inducing higher FDI inflows is still open to...

NGOs play an important role in international development cooperation, but the allocation of NGO aid has rarely been mapped, let alone explained. Based on a representative dataset for 61 important NGOs from various OECD countries, we analyze the targeting of NGO aid across a large number of...

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...

It continues to be heavily disputed whether foreign aid promotes economic growth in developing countries. In most cross-country regressions, aid is considered effective only if it shifts recipient countries to a significantly higher and sustainable growth path. We apply an alternative approach...

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...

Advanced OECD countries are widely held responsible to contain global carbon emissions by providing financial and technical support to developing economies, where emissions are increasing most rapidly. It is open to question, however, whether more generous official development assistance would...

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...

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...