Article summary
Donors give considerably more foreign aid to former colonies than to countries without colonial ties, but the reasons are unclear. Existing models often include colonial history without theoretical justification, and the explanation offered by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2009) reveals an interpretational problem: colonial history both raises a recipient's saliency to donors and has left lasting effects on recipients' social and political institutions. Both channels can affect aid flows, making the routine positive coefficient on colonial history ambiguous.