China's provision of development finance to other countries is sizable but reliable information is scarce. We introduce a new open source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance to Africa from 2000-2011. We find...

China’s development finance is sizable but reliable information is scarce. To address critical information gaps, we introduce a new open source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance to Africa from 2000-2011....

The Marshall Plan (1948–1952) was the largest aid transfer in history. This paper estimates its effects on Italy's postwar local economic development. It exploits plausibly exogenous differences between Italian provinces in the value of reconstruction grants they received. Provinces that could...

What is the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth? This is probably one of the most famous questions in the foreign aid – economic growth debate. Whether this question has been sufficiently answered remains to be known. Developing nations have been and continue to be known to...

Foreign aid is an important means of finance for governments of developing countries. The current study investigates whether too much inflow of aid to developing countries is beneficial or harmful to their economy and whether institutional quality and economic freedom matters in aid–growth...

Today fair trade follows two approaches. One approach, pioneered a half century ago by organizations such as Ten Thousand Villages, works with artisans to share their unique handiwork with potential buyers with whom they otherwise would not connect. Laura Raynolds and Douglas Murray refer to...

The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called ‘fragile states’, countries with critically...

While it is widely presumed that development progress in so-called fragile states is lagging behind, only very limited empirical analysis exists that investigates to what extent the levels and trends in the MDGs differ significantly between fragile and other developing countries, and between...

Foreign aid’s effectiveness in promoting economic growth remains mired in controversy.We examine the impact of the volatility of aid on economic growth, controlling for the level of aid. A four-year panel analysis is conducted encompassing 155 countries over the period 1966-2001. We find that...