Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Donor countries political motives might reduce the effectiveness of conditionality, channel aid to inferior projects, reduce the aid bureaucracy s effort, and change the power structure in the...

Does economic freedom increase the utility of an average citizen? Public choice theory in particular has emphasized the shortcomings of governments and voting processes, and the advantages of relying on markets and individual decision making. However, an increasing amount of people are refusing...

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Donor countries’ political motives might reduce the effectiveness of conditionality, channel aid to inferior projects, reduce the aid bureaucracy’s effort, and change the power structure in...

We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...

We investigate whether donors give more aid to countries with larger gender gaps in education, health, or women’s rights, and whether they reward improvements in those indicators. We find some evidence that high gender gaps in education and health are associated with higher allocation of aid...

The large share of politicians facing criminal accusations in India has sparked a public debate and an emerging literature that assesses its causes and effects. We develop a model of the incentives faced by members of parliament when deciding whether to engage in effort for their constituency to...

This paper explores the role of information transmission and misaligned interests across levels of government in explaining variation in the degree of decentralization across countries. Within a two-sided incomplete information principal-agent framework, it analyzes two alternative...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

Donors of foreign aid increasingly claim to consider gender inequality in the recipient countries to be a serious concern. While aid specifically to promote gender equality receives only a tiny share of aid budgets, allocations to education, health, and c