This book is about the institutions, incentives and constraints that guide the behaviour of people and organizations involved in the implementation of foreign aid programmes. While traditional performance studies tend to focus almost exclusively on the policies and institutions in recipient countries, this book looks at incentives in the entire chain of organizations involved in the delivery of foreign aid, from donor governments and agencies to consultants, experts and other intermediaries. Four aspects of foreign aid delivery are examined in detail: incentives inside donor agencies, the interaction of subcontractors with recipient organizations, incentives inside recipient country institutions, and biases in aid performance monitoring systems.

Both economic research and the history of foreign aid suggest that the largest barriers to development arise from a society's institutions - its norms and rules. This book explains how institutions drive economic development. It provides numerous examples to illustrate the complex, interlocking, and persistent nature of real world rules and norms.

Published in 1998, this book provides an empirical analysis of the impact of foreign economic aid in 67 developed countries over a 19 year period. The results include the relationships between aid and growth and the implication that methodologies traditionally used have been largely responsible for inconsistent findings in the past.

During the past five decades, sub-Saharan Africa has received more foreign aid than has any other region of the world, and yet poverty remains endemic throughout the region. As Kenneth Kalu argues, this does not mean that foreign aid has failed; rather, it means that foreign aid in its current form does not have the capacity to procure development or eradicate poverty. This is because since colonialism, the average African state has remained an instrument of exploitation, and economic and political institutions continue to block a majority of citizens from meaningful participation in the economy. Drawing upon case studies of Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria, this book makes the case for redesigning development assistance in order to strike at the root of poverty and transform the African state and its institutions into agents of development.

The Oxford Handbook of the Political Economy of International Trade surveys the literature on the politics of international trade and highlights the most exciting recent scholarly developments. The Handbook is focused on work by political scientists that draws extensively on work in economics, but is distinctive in its applications and attention to political features; that is, it takes politics seriously. The Handbook's framework is organized in part along the traditional lines of domestic society-domestic institutions - international interaction, but elaborates this basic framework to showcase the most important new developments in our understanding of the political economy of trade. Within the field of international political economy, international trade has long been and continues to be one of the most vibrant areas of study. Drawing on models of economic interests and integrating them with political models of institutions and society, political scientists have made great strides in understanding the sources of trade policy preferences and outcomes. The 27 chapters in the Handbook include contributions from prominent scholars around the globe, and from multiple theoretical and methodological traditions. The Handbook considers the development of concepts and policies about international trade; the influence of individuals, firms, and societies; the role of domestic and international institutions; and the interaction of trade and other issues, such as monetary policy, environmental challenges, and human rights. Showcasing both established theories and findings and cutting-edge new research, the Handbook is a valuable reference for scholars of political economy.

An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

A twentieth-century innovation, foreign aid has become a familiar and even expected element in international relations. But scholars and government officials continue to debate why countries provide it: some claim that it is primarily a tool of diplomacy, some argue that it is largely intended to support development in poor countries, and still others point out its myriad newer uses. Carol Lancaster effectively puts this dispute to rest here by providing the most comprehensive answer yet to the question of why governments give foreign aid. She argues that because of domestic politics in aid-giving countries, it has always been—and will continue to be—used to achieve a mixture of different goals. Drawing on her expertise in both comparative politics and international relations and on her experience as a former public official, Lancaster provides five in-depth case studies—the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark—that demonstrate how domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid. In doing so, she explores the impact on foreign aid of political institutions, interest groups, and the ways governments organize their giving. Her findings provide essential insight for scholars of international relations and comparative politics, as well as anyone involved with foreign aid or foreign policy.