This paper studies the role of US political factors in the allocation of World Bank concessional lending, where US political interests are proxied by voting similarity in the United Nations General Assembly on issues identified as important by the US Department of State. In contrast to previous studies we find that the US exerted a significant influence on IDA lending during the period 1993 200...

This paper examines how an industry’s productivity is changed by inward FDI occurring in affiliated downstream industries those buying from the focal industry. While controlling for FDI into the focal industry, I find that FDI in downstream industries has a significant negative influence on U.S. manufacturing industries in 1987-1991. Downstream FDI reduces productivity by lowering the demand fo...

We develop a new concept of rural technology diffusion influenced by labor mobility and business relations. The technology gain effect of labor mobility increases technology diffusiveness, whereas the technology drain effect decreases it. The concept is applied to survey data from the Mekong region, a new geographic area in this context. In the econometric analysis that takes spatial correlatio...

Does official aid pave the road for private foreign investment or does it suffocate private initiative by diverting resources towards unproductive activities? In this paper we explore this question using data for a large number of developing and emerging economies. Controlling for countries‘ institutional environment, we find that, evaluated at the mean, the marginal effect of aid on private fo...

This paper argues that morality is required to allow the gains from trade to be reaped by reducing the ‘policing’ type of transactions costs involved in opportunistic behaviour. But, as Hume emphasised neither God nor Reason can justify any particular morality, the only source of morality must be local traditions which socialize children through the moral emotions of shame and guilt. Capitalism...

The proliferation of country groupings indicates the need to assess the effectiveness of the current system for development cooperation and to explore better ways to manage the international system, as heterogeneity among developing countries increases. Great caution should be exercised in devising new country categories. Donors can use sound criteria for aid allocation without creating new gro...

The empirical relationship between trade protection and economic growth is surprisingly fragile, as shown in a number of other papers. After demonstrating this empirical sensitivity, we address one possible explanation for these findings: that the relationship is nonlinear. Following the endogenous growth literature, we test for the possibility that the relationship between trade barriers and g...

This short paper explores the complementarity between foreign aid and foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent studies on aid concluded that aid should come to an end or be reduced with a radical modification of the terms and conditions and FDI and trade should replace aid as the engine of development. In this paper, we argue that aid complements FDI and advances the efficacy of FDI in promoting...

We present microscopic and macroscopic magnetic properties of the highly frustrated antiferromagnet Ba(2)Sn(2)ZnCr(7p)Ga(10-7p)O22, respectively, probed with NMR and SQUID experiments. The T variation of the intrinsic susceptibility of the Cr3+ frustrated Kagomé bilayer, chi(Kag), displays a maximum around 45 K. The dilution of the magnetic lattice has been studied in detail for 0.29</=p</=0.97...

Should polio be eradicated worldwide, countries must decide whether to continue to vaccinate with the live-attenuated vaccine, to continue to vaccinate with the alternative, killed vaccine, or to cease vaccinating. To reap a dividend from polio eradication, countries must choose the last option, but vaccination cessation entails interdependent risks as well as rewards. This article models the p...