As concerns about reform fatigue in lower- and middle-income countries have become more widespread, so has the search for ways of boosting support for market-oriented reforms. While the effects of political institutions on reform results have been extensively analyzed, there has been relatively...

In this paper, we argue that the sizeable reduction in aggregate aid levels in the 1990's was due to the end of the Cold war. We use a dynamic econometric specification to test this hypothesis on a panel of 17 donor countries, spanning the years 1970-1997. We find aid to be positively related to...

In this paper we analyse the impact of foreign aid on gender outcomes and attitudes. We do this by matching geocoded household surveys with aid projects. This offers a middle way between project evaluations and aggregated cross-country comparisons, measuring an average community effect around...

Arrangements by which politically connected firms receive economic favors are a common feature around the world, but little is known of the form or effects of influence in business–government relationships. We present a simple model in which influence requires firms to provide goods of...

There has been relatively little investigation of the effect of constitutional transformations on the economic transition in post-communist countries. We develop a simple signalling model in which constitutionalism - a commitment to limit political power and provide judicial defence of basic...