Gordon Brown is promising £8.5bn ($15bn) to fund schooling in
developing countries. He's challenging other rich nations to
bring the total up to $100bn. It all sounds heart-warming. If
only it would work. But as former World Bank economist William
Easterly points out in his new book and in this essay, the
record of government-to-government foreign aid is not
encouraging. The west has transferred $2.3 trillion to
developing countries, with little to show for it: The evidence
is stark: $568bn spent on aid to Africa, and yet the typical
African country no richer today than 40 years ago. Dozens of
"structural adjustment" loans (aid loans conditional on policy
reforms) made to Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin
America, only to see the failure of both policy reform and
economic growth. The evidence suggests that aid results in less
democratic and honest government, not more. What does work is
good governance: property rights, markets, the rule of law, an
independent judiciary. Easterly stresses the importa