No real economic development took place through postwar wealth transfers, and even in the best cases the money returned to the West in Swiss accounts of Third World dictators.

Judge as of 2007 against development-economics evidence on postwar foreign aid and wealth transfers to developing countries. True: the evidence shows such transfers produced no real economic development anywhere, and that much of the money was diverted to Western (e.g. Swiss) accounts of dictators. Mostly false: there is real documented capital flight and kleptocracy (e.g. Mobutu, Marcos) and aid effectiveness is widely disputed, but cases of development helped by transfers (e.g. Marshall Plan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Green Revolution, health programmes) contradict 'no real economic development', so the claim overgeneralises. Mixed: the evidence on development impact is about balanced and the diversion point is substantially supported. False: transfers clearly produced substantial development and diversion to dictators' accounts was negligible. 'Mostly true' needs evidence that development gains were close to nil overall.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 WORKING PAPER NUMBER 26 (New Data, New Doubts: Revisiting "Aid, Policies, and Growth") William Easterly, Ross Levine, David Roodman (Center for Global Development working paper) · June 2003

   “We find that the BD finding is not robust to the use of this additional data. (JEL F350, O230, O400)”

2. E2 Aid, Policies, and Growth American Economic Review (American Economic Association) · September 2000

   “We find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies but has little effect in the presence of poor policies.”

3. E3 South Korea and Taiwan’s institutional capacity helped U.S. aid to be used well after 1945, while South Vietnam’s French colonial legacy hindered development. LSE United States Politics and Policy (USApp) blog · 21 October 2014

   “As can be seen, US aid played a crucial role in the rise of South Korea and Taiwan.”

4. E4 Africa's Exodus: Capital Flight and the Brain Drain as Portfolio Decisions Journal of African Economies (Oxford Academic) · 1 December 2004

   “We build a data set on financial and human capital flight for 48 countries for the period 1970–98”

E2 (Burnside and Dollar, 2000) found that aid had a positive effect on growth in developing countries with good policies. E1 (2003) found that this result did not hold up with more data, showing that aid's effect on growth was contested. E3 says US aid played a crucial role in the rise of South Korea and Taiwan, which contradicts the claim that no real development took place. E4 documents capital flight from African countries but does not show where the aid money went, so the claim that it ended up in dictators' Swiss accounts is not specifically supported. Overall the claim overgeneralises, as the criteria's 'mostly false' category describes.