This paper uses a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid, economic policies, and growth per capita GDP. We find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies but has little effect in the...

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transport costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and increases in per capita income. For most Latin American countries, transport costs are a greater barrier to U.S. markets than import tariffs. We investigate the...

This paper studies the pattern of allocation of foreign aid from various donors to receiving countries. We find considerable evidence that the direction of foreign aid is dictated by political and strategic considerations, much more than by the economic needs and policy performance of the...

Based on a survey that we designed and that covers a stratified random sample of 12,400 firms in 120 cities in China with firm-level accounting information for 2002-2004, this paper examines the presence of systematic distortions in capital allocation that result in uneven marginal returns to...

New data on Thailand's industrial firms shed light on the origins of the East Asian financial crisis and on the response of the manufacturing sector to the structural adjustment program supported by the international financial institutions. Before the crisis, Thai firms had declining...

One of the most contentious issues of globalization is the effect of global economic integration on inequality and poverty. This article documents five trends in the modern era of globalization, starting around 1980. The first trend is that growth rates in poor economies have accelerated and are...