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...

The Monterrey Consensus agreed at the UN summit on Financing for Development in 2002 promised a breakthrough in terms of donor generosity, aid effectiveness and new means of financing. However, the development orientation of world leaders proved to be short-lived. This is even though our...

A core result of the aid allocation literature is that the quality of governance in recipient countries does not affect the amounts of foreign aid received. Donor countries may still give aid to poorly-governed countries because of a dilemma they face: those countries most in need typically also...

The paper departs from the perception that trade in services in general and developing countries' exports in services in particular are dynamic segments of world trade. Both total trade data as well as US import trade figures do not support this perception. Success episodes such as the recent...

Measures of corruption and income are highly correlated across countries. We use prehistoric measures of biogeography as instruments for modern income levels to identify an exogenous long-run income effect. We find that our corruption-free incomes explain the cross-country pattern of corruption...

Using enterprise data for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS, this study examines the effects of corruption on productivity. Corruption is defined as a “bribe tax” and is compared to another form of institutional inefficiency, which is often believed to be closely linked...

Geocoding firm-level data and matching them to georeferenced household survey data, we are the first to analyze whether the presence of foreign investors is associated with changes in local corruption around foreign-owned production facilities in Sub-Saharan African countries. Applying an...

Educational outcomes of children are highly dependent on household and school-level inputs. In poor countries, remittances from migrants can provide additional funds for the education of the left behind. At the same time the absence of migrant parents can affect families' time allocation towards...

We study how liberalization and competition affect firms’ output and product scope depending on management practices. In a model of multi-product firms, we show that firms with better management practices specialize in fewer products with lower marginal costs. The model predicts that, under...

Timely assistance is a precondition for effective emergency relief in the aftermath of natural disasters. This paper shows that donor countries take faster aid decisions if they have stronger strategic interests at stake. We analyze a trilateral panel (donor, donor, recipient) of daily...