A "Farewell to Alms" and the dangers of Aid Advocacy

Arvind Subramanian writes in WSJ:

In research with Raghuram Rajan, we find that in countries that received more aid, exportable industries systematically underperformed. And exporting manufactured goods has been the mode of escape from underdevelopment in many of the East Asian successes. Is it a coincidence that, with rare exceptions (Mauritius), there are no booming clothing industries -- the launching pad for some of the East Asian miracles -- in aid-addled Africa? This despite the fact that clothing is only minimally demanding of infrastructure and entrepreneurship, and despite the very favorable access that Africa has always had in Western markets for exports of clothing products.

Aid advocacy leads to perhaps an even more serious problem. There is a limited stock of good will and good intentions in the rich world and the question becomes whether this stock is best harnessed by mobilizing more aid, or by pursuing alternative actions that could have a bigger impact.
Consider a few: mobilizing more money to provide incentives for greater research and development devoted to addressing poor country health and agriculture problems (the green revolution in Asia was made possible by research on high-yielding varieties of wheat, and Africa hasn't had a similar revolution of its own); making regulatory changes in industrial countries that can reduce corruption (for example, more rigorous enforcement of bribery and corruption by rich country officials and corporations) in poor countries, which could have a huge impact on economic performance; or allowing more immigration from the poorest countries, which would directly benefit the poor.
These solutions are seldom pursued with the zeal that they deserve, in part because they are more difficult to support politically, and in part because that zeal which is essential to overcome the difficulties gets diverted toward, well, to calling for more aid.