I use a natural experiment of oil-price-driven remittance flows to poor, non-oil-producing Muslim countries to demonstrate that remittances deteriorate the quality of governance, especially in countries with weak democratic institutions. The results indicate that a 1 standard deviation increase...

We use oil price fluctuations to test the impact of transfers from wealthy OPEC nations to their poorer Muslim allies. The instrument identifies plausibly exogenous variation in foreign aid. We investigate how aid is spent by tracking its short-run effect on aggregate demand, national accounts,...

Can export growth occur in states with weak governance and competitive clientelism? Conventional wisdom is that effective industrial policy requires a politically stable country with a centralized government. Absent these conditions, countries can pursue alternative types of industrial policies....

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological,...

Looks at a privately funded voucher program, finding minimal differences in math scores and modest differences in reading scores between voucher students and their public school counterparts, while also noting that the voucher program seems to be serving the working poor.

Notes test score impacts for African Americans but not Latinos after three years. Also reveals higher levels of parent satisfaction with private schools and some aspects of the school climate.