Official development assistance is a key source of external finance in many developing countries. A striking feature of these aid flows is their positive correlation with the business cycle of recipient countries. This pattern is puzzling in that it reinforces recipients' already strong and...

Official development assistance is a key source of external finance in many developing countries. A striking feature of these aid flows is their positive correlation with business cycles in recipient countries. This pattern is puzzling in that it reinforces recipients' already strong and costly...

Extant estimates of the welfare cost of business cycles suggest that this cost is quite low and might well be minuscule. Those estimates are based on consumption data for the United States as a whole. The volatility of aggregate consumption, however, is much stronger at the state level. We argue...

Macroeconomic fluctuations are much stronger in developing countries than in the United States. Yet, while a large literature debates the welfare cost of economic fluctuations in the US, it remains an open question how large that cost is in developing countries. Using several models, we provide...

Economic fluctuations are much stronger in developing countries than in the United States. Yet, while a large literature debates what constitutes a reasonable estimate of the welfare cost of business cycles in the US, it remains an open question how large that cost is in developing countries....

In this paper, we document empirical regularities in the foreign aid flows to developing countries over the last three decades. In spite of a large body of literature on foreign aid and its impact on recipients, surprisingly little is known about its business cycle characteristics. We show that,...

We document the real business cycle properties of foreign aid to poor countries. We show that aid exhibits the following empirical regularities over a twenty-five year period. First, it represents a significant source of income for the recipients. Second, it is very volatile--two to three times...