IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v17y2003i3p409-435.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Policy Selectivity Forgone: Debt and Donor Behavior in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Nancy Birdsall
  • Stijn Claessens
  • Ishac Diwan

Abstract

We assess the dynamics behind the high net resource transfers by donors and creditors to Sub-Saharan African countries. Analyzing the determinants of overall net transfers for a panel of 37 recipient countries in 1978--98, we find that country policies mattered little. Donors--especially bilateral donors--actually made greater transfers to countries with high debt, largely owed to multilateral creditors, when policies were "bad." We conclude that comprehensive debt relief has the potential, though not the certainty, to restore selectivity in support of good policies. That would make development assistance more effective going forward--and increase public support in donor countries. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Nancy Birdsall & Stijn Claessens & Ishac Diwan, 2003. "Policy Selectivity Forgone: Debt and Donor Behavior in Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(3), pages 409-435, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:17:y:2003:i:3:p:409-435
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:17:y:2003:i:3:p:409-435. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.