This note deals with a paradox: A literature growing exponentially in spite of the fact that it keeps finding the same result. We draw upon the findings of 106 empirical studies, of which 32 appeared in the last 4 years, to examine whether development aid generates economic growth. The studies...

The AEL (aid effectiveness literature) is econometric studies of the macroeconomic effects of development aid. It contains about 100 papers of which 68 are reduced form estimates of the effect of aid on growth in the recipient country. The raw data show that growth is unconnected to aid, but the...

This paper explores the impact of foreign aid on economic growth using variation in aid inflows from natural disasters. Because using a country's own disaster exposure as an instrument for aid inflows violates exogeneity assumptions, I instead use the disaster exposure of a country's "aid...

This article reviews the prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It argues that these goals will not be achieved by the target date of 2015 unless new action is taken by both rich and poor countries. It shows that current trends sharply contrast countries on their way to...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between foreign aid and growth using recently developed sample splitting methods that allow us to uncover evidence for the existence of heterogeneity and nonlinearity simultaneously. We also implement a new methodology that allows us to deal with...