We study the local impact of foreign aid allocated to districts and constituencies in Malawi over the period 1999–2013 using a highly detailed new aid database that includes annual disbursements at each project location. First, we show using household panel surveys that growth in light density...

The equilibrium size of a nation state is, in part, the result of a trade-off between the gains from scale economies in the provision of public services and the costs of applying uniform policy to heterogeneous cultural, institutional, and geographical fundamentals. Changes in such fundamentals...