Despite a flourishing research agenda that increasingly considers complexity and implements theory, foreign aid is often misunderstood by well-meaning policymakers or misconstrued by those with an agenda. This course is designed to provide perspective on the empirical realities of foreign aid. We will dive into the recent research on the causes and effects of aid, especially as they relate to politics and economics. The goal is to understand when foreign aid works and why it sometimes backfires, in order to craft better aid policy as practitioners and better research as scholars.