There is a new wave of external borrowing by African governments on private sovereign bond markets. The findings in this paper indicate that African economies pay higher-than-normal coupon rates on these markets; observed risk measures like agency ratings and debt to GDP ratios do not explain...

In this paper, we review the theoretical and empirical literature on capital flight. First, we discuss the measurement of capital flight. Next, we provide information on the magnitude as well as the ‘burden’ of capital flight for a selected set of developing countries in four regions of the...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have lofty expectations regarding the impact of official development aid. Are these expectations valid? This paper surveys the literature on aid and growth. It finds that practically all aid studies since the late 1990s conclude that aid increases economic...