Foreign aid encourages trade liberalization when given topolitically insecure leaders

Can foreign aid be a useful tool to promote trade liberalization? In new research which studies 66 autocracies over two decades, Daniel Yuichi Kono and Gabriella R. Montinola find that foreign aid does encourage trade liberalization – but only in countries where leaders are politically insecure. They write that the less chance that an autocratic leader has of staying in power, the greater the effect of aid on tariff reductions.