US and European policymakers are no longer taking a “wait and see” position on China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Late last year, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis challenged the fundamental premise of BRI, noting that “there are...

Bilateral donors use foreign aid to pursue soft power. We test the effectiveness of aid in reaching this goal by leveraging a new dataset on the precise commitment, implementation, and completion dates of Chinese development projects. We use data...

How do development projects influence the geographic distribution of economic activity within low-income and middle-income countries? Existing research

This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing — including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing

This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing — including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing