Understanding the development effects of official aid is crucial to building a better bridge between research and policy. This paper reviews the current evidence regarding the impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction, and develops a new narrative. In the light of this narrative, the paper...

India’s capital account displays a sharp swing in external financing from official assistance to private capital transfers in the 1990s. This paper examines the implications of this transition for the country. An analysis of the private resource transfer reveals that unlike official flows,...

Use of migration tax as an instrument for financing development expenditure in poorer countries has received renewed attention recently and is evolving as an important subject of research in development economics. This paper discusses a related issue where the revenue collected by taxing skilled...

The Monterrey Consensus agreed at the UN summit on Financing for Development in 2002 promised a breakthrough in terms of donor generosity, aid effectiveness and new means of financing. However, the development orientation of world leaders proved to be short-lived. This is even though our...

Asia faces very large infrastructure funding demands, estimated at around US$750 billion per year for energy, transport, telecommunications, water, and sanitation during 2010-2020 (ADB/ADBI 2009). Asia has large savings, significant international reserves, and rapid accumulations of funds that...

We analyze the influence of IMF and World Bank programs on political regime transitions. We develop an extended version of Acemoglu and Robinson's [American Economic Review 91, 2001] model of political transitions to show how the anticipation of new loans from in-ternational financial...

Since the late 1990s a selection on policy approach to aid was advocated such that more aid should be allocated to countries with good policies. A number of donors accepted this recommendation, including the World Bank, but there is little evidence that this has occurred. Donors, including the...

Focusing on seven bilateral donors over a 25 year period, the paper answers 4 questions related to aid allocation practice. Questions one and two examine allocation differences between donors and time periods. Questions three and four relate to changes in poverty and policy selectivity. To...