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...

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...

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