This article examines empirically the proposition that aid to poor countries is detrimental for external competitiveness, giving rise to Dutch disease type effects. At the aggregate level, aid is found to have a positive effect on growth. A sectoral decomposition shows that the effect is (i)...

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 account for competition for export markets among donor countries of foreign aid by analyzing spatial dependence in aid allocation. Employing sector-specific aid data, we find that the five largest donors react to aid giving by other donors with whom they compete in terms of exporting goods...

Empirically, a higher frequency of lightning strikes is associated with slower growth in labor productivity across the 48 contiguous U.S. states after 1990; before 1990, there is no correlation between growth and lightning. Other climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and tornadoes) do not...

We examine the idea that aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) are complementary sources of foreign capital. We argue that the relationship between aid and FDI is theoretically ambiguous: aid raises the marginal productivity of capital when used to finance complementary inputs (like public...