I investigate the effect of ratification of different human rights treaties adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Official Development Assistance (ODA) by donors of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). On average the ratification of an additional human rights treaty...

This survey of the 2016 replenishments of three multilateral development bank soft funds and of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria shows that a significant re-set of the multilateral development finance system is taking place, with grant funding from traditional donors generally in decline...

Evaluations are key to learning and accountability yet the quality of those evaluations are critical to their usefulness. We assessed the methodological quality of global health program evaluations commissioned or conducted by five major funders and published between 2009 and 2014. From a...

We study the role of development cooperation in improving women’s economic rights in non-OECD countries and assess whether development aid given for gender equality objectives leads to progress in women’s legal rights in recipient countries. We use a sample of over 100 recipient countries...

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,...

Discontent with the substantial influence of major global players in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) has raised a call to restructure these organizations. Greater involvement of borrowing members in lending decisions has been proposed in order to limit the exposure of development...

We use an excludable instrument to test the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in a sample of 96 recipient countries over the 1974-2009 period. We interact donor government fractionalization with a recipient country's probability of receiving aid. The results show that fractionalization...

This paper discusses past and current social policy strategies in the international aid architecture. From the 1990s, aid strategy and policy shifted to put a stronger emphasis on human development. This accelerated with the Millennium Development Goals and will continue under the Sustainable...

We present a new mechanism to explain politically induced changes in bilateral aid. We argue that shifts in the foreign policy alignment between a donor and a recipient country arising from leadership changes induce reallocation of development aid. Utilizing data from the G7 and 133 developing...

The role of foreign aid in the growth process of developing countries has been a topic of intense debate. Foreign aid is an important topic given its implications for poverty reduction in developing countries.Since the second World War, foreign aid has been one of the most prominent policy tools...