In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

Performance-based aid has been proposed as an alternative to the failed traditional approach whereby donors make aid conditional on the reform promises of recipient countries. However, hardly any empirical evidence exists on whether ex post rewards are effective in inducing reforms. We attempt...

Using the KOF Index of Globalization and two indices of economic freedom, we empirically analyze whether globalization and economic liberalization affect governments´ respect for human rights using a panel of 106 countries over the 1981-2004 period. According to our results, physical integrity...

It is widely believed that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has grossly fallen short of high expectations raised by the Bush administration in 2002. From the perspective of potential recipient countries, the crucial issue is whether the MCC increased the overall pool of aid resources...

NGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for...

The paper presents a detailed description of IMF and World Bank conditionality and tries to explain changes in this conditionality over time as well as differences between the two institutions. Using panel data it is shown that the number of Fund conditions seem to be influenced by...

We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the foremost international body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Members vote on issues of global importance and consequently receive perks – election to the UNSC predicts, for instance, World Bank and IMF loans....

What determines the foreign aid effort of donor countries? We review the existing literature on donors’ aid budgets and examine which of the suggested variables robustly determine aid effort, measured as Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a share of gross national income. More...