Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks—such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises—and are robust to instrumenting using predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5% at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.

What are the effects of supply-side climate policies in the oil market? We use global company-level data to estimate the impact of 84 reforms of production taxes between 2000 and 2019 on oil production, exploration, and discoveries. We find that higher taxes primarily reduce companies’ exploration expenditures and oil discoveries, and also reduce short-term production of unconventional oil. We then quantify the implications for the oil market using a short- and medium-term dynamic model extending until the end of the century. Imposing a global climate royalty surcharge of 20 percentage points on oil producers reduces average annual emissions from oil by 5–7% in the first 5 years, and 9–20% in the medium term. If only OECD countries adopt this policy, 47–73% of the total emission reductions would be offset by increased production in non-OECD countries in the medium term.