Vandana Shiva argues that through the masculinization of agriculture globalization has turned nature and women into passive fields for sowing. Shiva’s critique that international trade, and globalization more generally, has undermined the social and economic position of women in less developed...

Through case studies and empirical analysis, scholars have uncovered convincing evidence that individual donors influence lending decisions of international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Less clear are the mechanisms by which donors exert...

Using a novel application of stochastic frontier analysis to overcome data limitations, this paper finds substantially shorter project preparation periods for World Bank loans to countries that are geopolitically important (especially to the U.S.). Accelerated preparation is one explanation for...

This paper uses Freedom House ratings to assess the impact of foreign aid on democracy. We employ an interval regression to account for Freedom House׳s method of rating countries. A cross-sectional analysis examining the long run effect of aid on democracy in 122 countries between 1972 and 2011...

This paper assesses the impact of World Bank project preparation on project outcomes. Using a stochastic frontier model, I generate a measure of World Bank project preparation duration based on variation in political economy factors that are otherwise exogenous to project outcomes. Panel...

This paper uses monthly World Bank project-level data to assess the impact of upcoming elections in recipient countries on loan activity. We analyze the extent to which geopolitics influence both the timing and size of loan commitments and disbursements. While developing countries have better...

Wright (2008) investigates how the impact of foreign aid on GDP growth in dictatorships depends on the dictator’s time horizon, i.e., how much longer the dictator expects to be in office. The empirical analysis finds a strong positive impact of aid on growth for dictators with long time...

This paper uses Freedom House ratings to assess the impact of foreign aid on democracy. We employ an interval regression to account for Freedom House's method of rating countries. A cross-sectional analysis examining the long run effect of aid on democracy in 122 countries between 1972 and 2011...

This paper investigates U.S. informal influence in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) by testing whether IDB loans disburse faster when the borrowing country is geopolitically or economically important to the U.S. The methodology is similar to that in earlier work on the World Bank and...