New Data, New doubts: A Comment on Burnside and Dollar's "Aid, Policies, and Growth" (2000)

Abstract

The Burnside and Dollar (2000, AER) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970 -93 to 1970 -97, as well as filling in missing data for the original period 1970 -93. We find that the Burnside and Dollar (2002, AER) finding is not robust to the use of this additional data.