Entwicklungsbanken wie die KfW unterliegen nicht dem Gebot der Gewinnmaximierung, sondern haben das Mandat zur Förderung der wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und ökologischen Entwicklung. Sie helfen Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern, Unzulänglichkeiten des Marktes zu überbrücken, mit dem Ziel,...

Bilateral donors use foreign aid to pursue soft power. We test the effectiveness of aid in reaching this goal by leveraging a new dataset on the precise commitment, implementation, and completion dates of Chinese development projects. We use data from the Gallup World Poll for 126 countries over...

Drawing on our recent work on local effects of Chinese development projects in Africa, this review article highlights a number of distinguishing features of Chinese aid, and discusses how these may translate into local aid impacts that differ from those of other donors. Unlike aid from other...

In response to surging immigration pressure in Europe and the United States, Western policymakers advocate foreign aid as a means to fight the 'root causes' of irregular migration. This article provides the first global evidence of the effects of aid on migration preferences, migration flows,...

A Planner vs. Searcher paradigm is used to illustrate the lack of positive progress in aid to African agriculture. Planners announce good intentions, raise expectations, but take on no responsibility in meeting them; they determine what to supply, apply global blueprints but lack knowledge of...

We model the aid allocation decision where the donor government has announced that good governance is the criterion for receiving aid. Potential recipients must compete for the aid funds. The structure of the competition is important to the donor in terms of achieving good governance, and to the...

We argue that a purpose of foreign aid is to whet the appetite of the recipient in order to bring about a long term commitment to what the donor perceives as a need, but which the recipient may rank lower down on his list of undertakings, or may be sufficiently resource constrained as to be...

This paper analyzes the decentralization of decision-making in aid-giving in a theoretical rent-seeking framework. In this analysis the root donor establishes a necessary criterion for potential recipients: good governance. The potential recipients compete in hierarchal contests for funds. The...