The existence of a natural resources curse is widely accepted in academic and policy circles. With its focus on institutional quality, the resource curse thesis is symptomatic of the current "good governance" agenda. This paper subjects the thesis to critical evaluation and finds it wanting. It...

East Africa is undergoing a natural resource boom that has the potential to reshape national economies and development aid in the region. Questions remain whether key Danish development partners, including Tanzania, Mozambique, and Uganda, can harness newfound oil, gas, and minerals for...

Over the past twenty years, Mozambique has achieved remarkable progress in promoting macroeconomic growth and stability. Nonetheless, poverty rates remain high and labour market activity is dominated by smallholder farming. We use recent household survey data to dig into these trends and provide...

This paper confirms recent evidence of a positive impact of aid on growth and widens the scope of evaluation to a range of outcomes including proximate sources of growth (e.g., physical and human capital), indicators of social welfare (e.g., poverty and infant mortality), and measures of...

Does foreign aid promote aggregate economic growth? In contrast to widespread perceptions, academic studies of this question have been rapidly converging towards a positive answer. We employ a simulation approach to (i) validate the coherence of recent empirics and (ii) calculate plausible...