This paper (i) traces the historical origins of foreign aid, (ii) investigates tren­ds in the volume, composition, allocation and quality of aid flows, and (iii) reviews the empirical literature on aid allocation. The paper concludes that, historically, aid has served a multitude of objectives....

The paper examines the most recent data on the external debts of developing countries in order to assess whether the external debt crisis is a thing of the past, or whether there is still cause for attention and concern. The main conclusion of the paper is that while a number of middle-income...

This paper traces the origins of World Bank indicators of debt distress and their employment as HIPC sustainability targets. These targets are interpreted as ‘switching values’, below which countries are (on average) expected to avoid debt service problems, but as such, they do not take into...