New Data, New Doubts: Revised 2013

In 2000, Burnside and Dollar wrote a seminal paper declaring their finding that international economic aid works to increase economic growth in less developed countries where there is good policy. However, in 2003, Easterly, Levine and Roodman, disputed this result, finding the inclusion of additional countries into the sample and a broadening of years covered by the study diminish the robustness of the policy variables significance. This book will recreate the work of Easterly, Levine and Roodman, and up-date it where they left off in 1997 with the most current data to determine if these results still hold true. Results suggest that policy is in deed significant to growth, irrespective of aid, though the aid-growth relationship is ambiguous, as is any interaction aid and policy have with growth.

Returning to the United States when she was ten from living in Harare, Zimbabwe and Monrovia, Liberia, Kathleen knew that she wanted to help make a better world. This led her to study international relations and economics at Eckerd College in Florida. Kathleen then earned her graduate degrees in those subjects from CSUS in Sacramento.