Do states use trade to reward and punish partners? WTO rules and the pressures of globalization restrict states’ capacity to manipulate trade policies, but we argue that governments can link political goals with economic outcomes using less direct avenues of influence over firm behavior....

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

This article investigates whether China's foreign aid is particularly prone to political capture by political leaders of aid-receiving countries. Specifically, we examine whether more Chinese aid is allocated to the political leaders' birth regions and regions populated by the ethnic group to...

Der Aufstieg der Schwellenländer ist sichtbar sowohl in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, als auch in den internationalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen. Hilfsleistungen der Geberländer, die außerhalb des Ausschusses für Entwicklungshilfe der OECD operieren, haben in den letzten Jahren...

The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of exports to China from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test to which...

Foreign aid from China is often characterized as ‘rogue aid' that is not guided by recipient need but by China's national interests alone. However, no econometric study so far confronts this claim with data. We make use of various datasets, covering the 1956-2006 period, to empirically test to...