IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/asiaec/v14y2015i1p180-197.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Motivations for Bilateral Aid Allocation in Korea: Humanitarian, Commercial, or Diplomatic?

Author

Listed:
  • Bokyeong Park

    (Kyung Hee University)

  • Hongshik Lee

    (Korea University)

Abstract

This study investigates Korea's motivations for foreign aid allocation, analyzing panel data from over 180 countries for the last 20 years. The results show that Korea's aid allocation reflects both recipient needs and Korea's own national interests but does not consistently consider aid effectiveness. Korean aid is also characterized by its use as an instrument of both summit diplomacy and resource security. In addition, its commercial motivations appear to have shifted over time, from export promotion to overseas investment support. Despite internal and external pressures, there is no obvious evidence that Korea's allocation rule converges with international guidelines that recommend greater consideration of recipient needs and aid effectiveness and less consideration of donor interests. © 2015 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Suggested Citation

  • Bokyeong Park & Hongshik Lee, 2015. "Motivations for Bilateral Aid Allocation in Korea: Humanitarian, Commercial, or Diplomatic?," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 14(1), pages 180-197, Winter/Sp.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:asiaec:v:14:y:2015:i:1:p:180-197
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ASEP_a_00335
    File Function: link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Dollar, David, 2000. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 33-63, March.
    2. Ryan Macdonald & John Hoddinott, 2004. "Determinants of Canadian bilateral aid allocations: humanitarian, commercial or political?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 294-312, May.
    3. Younas, Javed, 2008. "Motivation for bilateral aid allocation: Altruism or trade benefits," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 661-674, September.
    4. Fleck, Robert K. & Kilby, Christopher, 2010. "Changing aid regimes? U.S. foreign aid from the Cold War to the War on Terror," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 185-197, March.
    5. Jean‐Claude Berthélemy, 2006. "Bilateral Donors’ Interest vs. Recipients’ Development Motives in Aid Allocation: Do All Donors Behave the Same?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 179-194, May.
    6. Anke Hoeffler & Scott Gates, 2004. "Global Aid Allocation: Are Nordic Donors Different?," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2004-34, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Maizels, Alfred & Nissanke, Machiko K., 1984. "Motivations for aid to developing countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 12(9), pages 879-900, September.
    8. Scott Gates & Anke Hoeffler, 2004. "Global Aid Allocation: Are Nordic Donors Different?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2004-34, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    9. William Greene, 2004. "The behaviour of the maximum likelihood estimator of limited dependent variable models in the presence of fixed effects," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 7(1), pages 98-119, June.
    10. Kang, Sung Jin & Lee, Hongshik & Park, Bokyeong, 2011. "Does Korea follow Japan in foreign aid? Relationships between aid and foreign investment," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 19-27, January.
    11. Raghuram G. Rajan & Arvind Subramanian, 2008. "Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 643-665, November.
    12. Berthelemy, Jean-Claude & Tichit, Ariane, 2004. "Bilateral donors' aid allocation decisions--a three-dimensional panel analysis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 253-274.
    13. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bobae Noh & Almas Heshmati, 2021. "Does official development assistance affect a donor’s exports? South Korea’s case," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(10), pages 1-28, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stubbs, Thomas H. & Kentikelenis, Alexander E. & King, Lawrence P., 2016. "Catalyzing Aid? The IMF and Donor Behavior in Aid Allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 511-528.
    2. Nagae, Akira & Katayama, Hajime & Takase, Koichi, 2022. "Donor aid allocation and accounting standards of recipients," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    3. Minoiu, Camelia & Reddy, Sanjay G., 2010. "Development aid and economic growth: A positive long-run relation," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 27-39, February.
    4. Brech, Viktor & Potrafke, Niklas, 2014. "Donor ideology and types of foreign aid," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 61-75.
    5. Eunmi Lee & Kwangho Jung & Jinbae Sul, 2019. "Searching for the Various Effects of Subprograms in Official Development Assistance on Human Development across 15 Asian Countries: Panel Regression and Fuzzy Set Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-21, February.
    6. Łukasz Marć, 2015. "The impact of aid on total government expenditures: New evidence on fungibility," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-010, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Łukasz Marć, 2017. "The Impact of Aid on Total Government Expenditures: New Evidence on Fungibility," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 627-663, August.
    8. Clist, Paul, 2011. "25Years of Aid Allocation Practice: Whither Selectivity?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1724-1734.
    9. Axel Dreher & Sarah Langlotz & Silvia Marchesi, 2017. "Information Transmission And Ownership Consolidation In Aid Programs," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1671-1688, October.
    10. Rainer Thiele & Peter Nunnenkamp & Axel Dreher, 2007. "Do Donors Target Aid in Line with the Millennium Development Goals? A Sector Perspective of Aid Allocation," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 143(4), pages 596-630, December.
    11. Jing Shao & Maojun Wang, 2020. "Analyzing the spatial allocation of Japan’s aid to China: A perspective from the relations between aid allocation stakeholders," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 1277-1303, September.
    12. Rahman, Md Saifur & Giessen, Lukas, 2017. "Formal and Informal Interests of Donors to Allocate Aid: Spending Patterns of USAID, GIZ, and EU Forest Development Policy in Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 250-267.
    13. Frot, Emmanuel & Olofsgård, Anders & Berlin, Maria Perrotta, 2014. "Aid Effectiveness in Times of Political Change: Lessons from the Post-Communist Transition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 127-138.
    14. Olofsgård, Anders & Perrotta, Maria & Frot, Emmanuel, 2012. "Aid Motivation in Early and Mature Partnerships: Is there a difference?," SITE Working Paper Series 17, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
    15. Dreher, Axel & Mölders, Florian & Nunnenkamp, Peter, 2007. "Are NGOs the better donors? A case study of aid allocation for Sweden," Kiel Working Papers 1383, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    16. Metzger, Laura & Nunnenkamp, Peter & Omar Mahmoud, Toman, 2008. "Does corporate aid really help fighting worldwide poverty? A case study of Nestlé's aid allocation," Kiel Working Papers 1414, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Raschky, Paul A. & Schwindt, Manijeh, 2012. "On the channel and type of aid: The case of international disaster assistance," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 119-131.
    18. Reinsberg, Bernhard, 2015. "Foreign Aid Responses to Political Liberalization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 46-61.
    19. Daniele Pianeselli, 2016. "Does The one who pays the piper really call the tune? OECD and Chinese aid to infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0204, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    20. Metzger, Laura & Nunnenkamp, Peter & Mahmoud, Toman Omar, 2010. "Is Corporate Aid Targeted to Poor and Deserving Countries? A Case Study of Nestlé's Aid Allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 228-243, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Korea; foreign aid; panel data; aid allocation; summit diplomacy; resource security; commercial motivation; export promotion; overseas investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
    • P00 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General - - - General
    • I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - 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:tpr:asiaec:v:14:y:2015:i:1:p:180-197. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.