Niels Johannesen's’ paper downloaded 90.000 times

Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts” by CEBI member Niels Johannesen is by far the most downloaded among the 9000+ working papers ever published by the World Bank.

The paper shows that aid disbursements from the World Bank to low-income countries coincide with sharp increases in account balances in offshore financial centers. The estimates suggest that around 7.5% of aid disbursed by the World Bank to this set of countries is captured by elites and diverted to secret accounts.

The paper is forthcoming in Journal of Political Economy.