This paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and growth in real GDP per capita as it emerges from simple augmentations of popular cross-country growth specifications. It is shown that aid in all likelihood increases the growth rate, and this result is not conditional on "good"...

As research on the empirical link between aid and growth continues to grow, it is time to revisit the accumulated evidence on aid effectiveness. This paper does this by building on the meta-analysis in our previous work. The availability of more data enables us to conduct a sub-group analysis by...

After a massive international campaign calling attention to the development impact of foreign debt, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is now underway. But will the HIPC Initiative meet its high expectations? Will debt relief substantially raise growth? How do we make sure...

Understanding industry agglomeration and its driving forces is critical for the formulation of industrial policy in developing countries. Crucial to this process is the definition and measurement of agglomeration. We propose a new measure and examine what it reveals about the importance of...

This paper considers the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments distorts the efficient allocation of...

This paper considers the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments distorts the efficient allocation of...

The objective of this paper is to survey what is actually known about the finance-growth relationship based on theory and empirical work. We point out that traditional theoretical models linking financial development and economic growth do not pay sufficient attention to insights emerging from...

The political factors shaping IMF lending to developing countries have attracted attention in recent empirical work. This goes in particular for the role and influence of the US. However, scant formal modelling makes interpretation of empirical results difficult. In this paper, we propose a...