Based on study of (a) the HIPC debt relief initiative, (b) the linking of aid to policy conditionality and (c) transactions-cost arguments in favour of programme aid, this article argues that major elements in the new aid agenda may not be well-based empirically. This is partly because of...

The World Bank is a prestigious and large international financial institution. Since its foundation it has widened the scope and the size of its activities. One interpretation of what the World Bank is doing is the provision of public goods. If we take this interpretation seriously the...

We study how 22 donors allocate their bilateral aid among 147 recipient countries over the 1970-2004 period to investigate whether changes in the international aid architecture - at the international and country level - have led to changes in behavior. We find that after the fall of the Berlin...