The most recent literature on aid effectiveness finds a positive effect of aid on growth. To the extent that aid goes through the budget, this either reflects an aid-financed increase in government expenditures (quantity effect) or an improvement in the use of government resources as a result of...

This paper analyzes optimal foreign aid policy in a neoclassical framework with a conflict of interest between the donor and the recipient government. Aid conditionality is modelled as a limited enforceable contract. We define conditional aid policy to be self-enforcing if, at any point in time,...

A windfall of natural resource revenue (or foreign aid) faces government with choices of how to manage public debt, investment, and the distribution of funds for consumption, particularly if the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. We show that the permanent income hypothesis prescription...

The link between foreign aid and economic growth remains a controversial issue in the literature, and a large share of the disagreement could be explained by differences in the data employed. Using GDP data from three different versions of the Penn World Table and the World Development...

In a recent article, Nowak-Lehmann, Dreher, Herzer, Klasen, and Martínez-Zarzoso (2012) (henceforth NDHKM) conclude that foreign aid has not had a significant effect on income, based on evidence from panel data potentially covering 131 countries over the period 1960-2006. The present study...

This study explores a basic idea in political economy: Trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending...

When do opposition groups decide to mount a terrorism campaign and when do they enter an open civil conflict against the ruling government? This paper models an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open conflict. Terrorism emerges if executive constraints are intermediate and...

This study explores a basic idea in political economy: trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending...