The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro and meso-levels, recent literature has turned decidedly pessimistic with respect to the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth. Policy implications, such as the complete cessation of aid to Africa, are being drawn on the basis of fragile evidence. This paper first assesses the aid-growth litera...

In 2015, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees accommodated over 15 million refugees, mostly in refugee camps in developing countries. The World Food Program provided these refugees with food aid, in cash or in kind. Refugees' impacts on host countries are controversial and little understood. This unique study analyzes the economic impacts of refugees on host-country economies within ...

Over the past two decades, donors increasingly linked foreign aid to democracy objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet systematic research on this topic typically focuses on how aid influences democratic transitions. This study investigates whether and how foreign aid affects the process of democratic consolidation in sub-Saharan Africa by examining two potential mechanisms: (1) the use of aid as...

This paper investigates the relationship between foreign aid and growth in per capita GDP using annual data from the 1960 to 1997 period for a sample of 71 aid-receiving developing economies. The results show that the effect of foreign aid on economic growth is positive, permanent, statistically significant, and sizable: raising foreign aid by $20 per person of the receiving country results in ...

The issue of modelling international financial aid to underdeveloped countries baffled economists for decades. The initial assumptions (that outside aid could help bolster up the internally insufficient investment, thus helping economic growth) were statistically proven wrong; most of the recipient countries did not experience rapid growth, rather an increasing dependence on foreign aid. The qu...

Foreign aid is an important means of finance for governments developing countries. The current study investigates whether too much inflow to countries beneficial or harmful their economy and institutional quality economic freedom matters in aid–growth relationship. To this base, a panel data covering the period 2002–2019 was collected from 44 world. System generalized method moment employed exa...

With the change in donors’ priorities since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, there has been a decline in annual aid inflows to Pacific island countries (PICs), which have been among the world’s top recipients of aid per capita in the past. Along with fall in aid inflows, growing annual domestic budgetary deficits in recent years have forced some PICs to finance them through borrowing....

With the aid of an analytical framework of the Lewis model revised to reflect the experience of China, this paper examines the country’s dualistic economic development and its unique characteristics. The paper outlines the major effects of China’s growth as achieved during the course of economic reform and the opening-up of the country: the exploitation of the demographic dividend, the realizat...

Aid for trade constitutes the most successful initiative that has hitherto emerged from the multilateral trade negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). Myriad studies show that international trade is essential in sustaining long-term growth and development and in reducing poverty. However, developing economies face market failures and binding constraints—from infrastructural shortc...

This paper presents findings of an evaluation undertaken by ActionAid Australia and local partners in Uganda, Palestine and Cambodia to understand how changes in economic participation affect women’s lives, and how women value these changes. The projects were supported through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP). It is timely to revisit women’s empowerment as aid agencies around the w...