The relationship between foreign aid and the economic growth of developing countries is unquestionably an intricate one. While a newcomer to the topic might expect to find an obvious effect of aid on growth, the overwhelming majority of the literature in this field does not conclude its studies...

The widely publicized finding that "aid promotes growth in a good policy environment" is not robust to the inclusion of new data or alternative definitions of "aid," "policy" or "growth." The idea that "aid buys growth" is on shaky ground theoretically and empirically. It doesn't help that aid...