Public spending often increases at the end of fiscal years. This is undesirable because late spending tends to be inefficient. The causes for these spending spikes are however poorly understood. This paper offers a novel identification strategy that relies on the historic variation in countries'...

We show that the impact of foreign aid on bureaucratic quality in recipient countries varies with the mode of delivery. Specifically, grants are found to impair the functioning of the bureaucracy, whereas loans are not. The negative impact of grants is larger when they are given as budget...

Public spending often increases at the end of fiscal years. This is undesirable because late spending tends to be inefficient. The causes for these spending spikes are however poorly understood. This paper offers a novel identification strategy that relies on the historic variation in countries'...

Over 300 government members have had the main responsibility for international development cooperation in 23 member countries of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee since the organization started reporting detailed Official Development Assistance (ODA) data in 1967. Understanding their...

Donor aid organizations (DAOs) are multi-layered and multi-dimensional bureaucracies with many departments trying to find solutions to problems for countries, investing staff resources and effort into having an effect. A department may come into conflict with other departments because of...

This essay reviews the state of knowledge about the connection of climate change and development aid in a globalizing world and makes three contributions. First, it opts for an integrated treatment of short-term aid, striving for the urgent fulfillment of basic human needs, and long-term aid,...

The link between foreign aid and economic growth remains a controversial issue in the literature, and a large share of the disagreement could be explained by differences in the data employed. Using GDP data from three different versions of the Penn World Table and the World Development...

Growing criticism of inefficient development aid demanded new planning instruments of donors, including international NGOs (INGOs). A reorientation from isolated project-planning towards holistic country concepts and the increasing rationality of a result-orientated planning process were seen as...