Aid flows continue to be volatile and unpredictable, even though it is widely accepted that this erodes the effectiveness of foreign aid. We argue that fragmented donor-recipient relationships, notably the large number of minor aid relations that tend to be associated with donors’ desire to...

We argue that the trend toward international investment agreements (IIAs) with stricter investment rules is driven by competitive diffusion, namely defensive moves of developing countries concerned about foreign direct investment (FDI) diversion in favor of competing host countries. Accounting...

We account for the competition for export markets among the donor countries of foreign aid by analyzing spatial dependence in aid allocation. We employ sector-specific aid data, distinguishing between first and second stage decisions on the selection of recipient countries and the amount of aid...

We argue that donors could improve the effectiveness of foreign aid by pursuing complementary and coherent non-aid policies. In particular, we hypothesize that aid from donors that are open to immigration has stronger growth effects than aid from closed donors. We estimate the aid-growth nexus...

Acknowledging that aid proliferation and a lack of coordination impair aid effectiveness, donors have repeatedly promised to specialize and better coordinate their aid activities, most notably in the Paris Declaration of 2005. We exploit geocoded aid data from Malawi to assess whether the...

We assess the role of capital goods imports and inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) as transmission channels through which major emerging economies (BRICs, i.e., Brazil, Russian Federation, India and China) could catch up with advanced source countries in terms of total factor...

Recent studies offer an ambiguous picture on the effectiveness of foreign aid in strengthening the export capacity of recipient countries. Moreover, the literature on aid for trade (AfT) has often neglected that exporters in the donor countries may be among the main beneficiaries. We hypothesize...

Die meisten afrikanischen Länder laufen Gefahr, die Millennium Development Goals weit zu verfehlen. Die Vereinten Nationen fordern deshalb, die Entwicklungshilfe massiv aufzustocken, und der Afrika-Aktionsplan der G8 verspricht eine Konzentration der Hilfe auf Afrika. Vor diesem Hintergrund...

We empirically assess the determinants of India’s FDI outflows across a large sample of host countries in the 1996-2009 period. Based on gravity model specifications, we employ Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimators. Major findings include: India’s outward FDI is hardly affected...

We construct comprehensive and comparable indices on the most relevant components of economic infrastructure. An unobserved components model is employed to cover the largest possible number of developing and developed countries over the period 1990-2010. We map major findings from the new...