Advanced Search

Foreign Aid and the Business Cycle

Contents:

Author Info

  • Pallage, Stephane
  • Robe, Michel A

Abstract

This paper documents empirical regularities in the foreign aid flows to developing countries over three decades. In spite of a large body of literature on foreign aid and its impact on recipients, surprisingly little is known about its business cycle characteristics. The authors show that for the vast majority of African recipients, aid flows are a major source of income that is highly volatile and, most importantly, overwhelmingly procyclical. For recipients outside of Africa, there is a similar--if somewhat less pronounced--pattern of aid procyclicality. In contrast, there is little evidence of aid procyclicality with the business cycle of donors. In light of the very high volatility of output in developing countries, the procyclicality of foreign aid flows from the recipients' perspective raises serious questions related to their welfare and growth. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=synergy&synergyAction=showTOC&journalCode=roie&volume=9&issue=4&year=2001&part=null
File Function: link to full text
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Wiley Blackwell in its journal Review of International Economics.

Volume (Year): 9 (2001)
Issue (Month): 4 (November)
Pages: 641-72
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:bla:reviec:v:9:y:2001:i:4:p:641-72

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0965-7576

Order Information:
Web: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/subs.asp?ref=0965-7576

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Garey Ramey & Valerie A. Ramey, 1994. "Cross-Country Evidence on the Link Between Volatility and Growth," NBER Working Papers 4959, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Marcet, Albert & Marimon, Ramon, 1992. "Communication, commitment, and growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 219-249, December.
  3. Mendoza, Enrique G, 1995. "The Terms of Trade, the Real Exchange Rate, and Economic Fluctuations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 36(1), pages 101-37, February.
  4. Ernesto Talvi & Carlos A. Vegh, 2000. "Tax Base Variability and Procyclical Fiscal Policy," NBER Working Papers 7499, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Alberto Alesina & David Dollar, 1998. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," NBER Working Papers 6612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Backus, David K & Kehoe, Patrick J & Kydland, Finn E, 1994. "Dynamics of the Trade Balance and the Terms of Trade: The J-Curve?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 84-103, March.
  7. Fiorito, Riccardo & Kollintzas, Tryphon, 1992. "Stylized Facts of Business Cycles in the G7 from a Real Business Cycles Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 681, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  8. Craig Burnside & David Dollar, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
  9. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
  10. Ambler, S. & Cardia, E. & Zimmermann, C., 2000. "International Business Cycles: What Are the Facts?," Cahiers de recherche 2000-05, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
  11. Finn E. Kydland & Edward C. Prescott, 1990. "Business cycles: real facts and a monetary myth," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Spr, pages 3-18.
  12. Michael A. Kouparitsas, 1996. "North-South business cycles," Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues WP-96-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
  13. Charles C. Chang & Eduardo Fernández-Arias & Luis Serven, 1998. "Measuring Aid Flows: A New Approach," RES Working Papers 4146, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
  14. Bankim Chadha & Eswar Prasad, 1992. "Are Prices Countercyclical?," IMF Working Papers 92/88, International Monetary Fund.
  15. Lane, Philip R., 1999. "Do International Investment Income Flows Smooth Income?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2123, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  16. Cooley, Thomas F. & Ohanian, Lee E., 1991. "The cyclical behavior of prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 25-60, August.
  17. Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "When is foreign aid policy credible? Aid dependence and conditionality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 61-84, February.
  18. Robert J. Hodrick & Edward Prescott, 1981. "Post-War U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Discussion Papers 451, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
  19. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-84, March.
  20. Enrique G. Mendoza, 1992. "The Terms of Trade and Economic Fluctuations," IMF Working Papers 92/98, International Monetary Fund.
  21. Easterly, William, 1997. "The ghost of financing gap : how the Harrod-Domar growth model still haunts development economics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1807, The World Bank.
  22. Eswar Prasad & Pierre-Richard Agénor & C. John McDermott, 1999. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Developing Countries - Some Stylized Facts," IMF Working Papers 99/35, International Monetary Fund.
  23. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-70, November.
  24. Atkeson, Andrew, 1991. "International Lending with Moral Hazard and Risk of Repudiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 1069-89, July.
  25. Hansen, Henrik & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Aid and growth regressions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 547-570, April.
  26. Lucas, Robert E., 1977. "Understanding business cycles," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 7-29, January.
  27. Easterly, William, 1999. "The ghost of financing gap: testing the growth model used in the international financial institutions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 423-438, December.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Zambia on the verge of a Dutch disease?
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2008-04-21 08:02:00
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
  1. Economic Logic blog

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:reviec:v:9:y:2001:i:4:p:641-72

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.