Recent empirical evidence suggests that Chinese development finance may be particularly prone to elite capture and patronage spending. If aid ends up in the pockets of political elites and their ethno-regional networks, this may exacerbate ethnic grievances and contribute to ethnic mobilization....

Fairtrade labeling has the potential to increase market efficiency by connecting farmers to altruistic consumers who are willing to pay a premium for sustainability-certified products. A requirement for increased efficiency, though, is that the farmers' benefits are larger than the Fairtrade...

In this study, we derive a poverty-minimizing allocation rule, based on which we assess the povertyefficiency of actual aid allocations, with a special focus on the comparative impact of new donors and new non-aid flows. The results suggest a substantial misallocation of aid. Our benchmark...

This paper investigates the explanatory power of social convention theory for explaining the persistence of female genital cutting (FGC) in a broad sample of African countries. While influential in policy circles, the idea that FGC is best described as a bad equilibrium in a social coordination...