IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jhucap/doi10.1086-710321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aid Volatility, Human Capital, and Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre-Richard Agénor
  • Nihal Bayraktar

Abstract

We study the effect of aid volatility on education outcomes and economic growth, in a model that focuses on a low-income economy where acquiring skills benefits from public subsidies partly financed through foreign aid. By creating uncertainty about the net return to education, a high degree of aid volatility mitigates agents’ incentives to invest in skills. If savings and growth depend on the composition of the labor force, aid volatility may have an adverse effect on the mean growth rates of investment and output. Panel data regressions for a group of aid-dependent countries provide robust evidence of a negative relationship between the volatility of education aid and schooling outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre-Richard Agénor & Nihal Bayraktar, 2020. "Aid Volatility, Human Capital, and Growth," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(3), pages 401-448.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jhucap:doi:10.1086/710321
    DOI: 10.1086/710321
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/710321
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/710321
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/710321?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Agénor, Pierre-Richard & Dinh, Hinh T., 2015. "Social capital, product imitation and growth with learning externalities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 41-54.
    2. Lisa Chauvet & Patrick Guillaumont, 2009. "Aid, Volatility, and Growth Again: When Aid Volatility Matters and When it Does Not," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 452-463, August.
    3. Carter, Patrick, 2017. "Aid econometrics: Lessons from a stochastic growth model," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 216-232.
    4. Arellano, Cristina & Bulír, Ales & Lane, Timothy & Lipschitz, Leslie, 2009. "The dynamic implications of foreign aid and its variability," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 87-102, January.
    5. Morrissey, Oliver, 2015. "Aid and Government Fiscal Behavior: Assessing Recent Evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 98-105.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5400 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Baldacci, Emanuele & Hillman, Arye L. & Kojo, Naoko C., 2004. "Growth, governance, and fiscal policy transmission channels in low-income countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 517-549, September.
    8. Agénor, Pierre-Richard & Aizenman, Joshua, 2010. "Aid volatility and poverty traps," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-7, January.
    9. Lisa Chauvet & Patrick Guillaumont, 2009. "Aid, Volatility, and Growth Again: When Aid Volatility Matters and When it Does Not," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(s1), pages 452-463, August.
    10. Marta Guerriero, 2019. "The Labor Share of Income Around the World: Evidence from a Panel Dataset," ADB Institute Series on Development Economics, in: Gary Fields & Saumik Paul (ed.), Labor Income Share in Asia, chapter 0, pages 39-79, Springer.
    11. Pierre-Richard Agénor & Baris Alpaslan, 2013. "Child Labor, Intra-Household Bargaining and Economic Growth," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 181, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    12. Museru, Malimu & Toerien, Francois & Gossel, Sean, 2014. "The Impact of Aid and Public Investment Volatility on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 138-147.
    13. William Blankenau & Gabriele Camera, 2009. "Public Spending on Education and the Incentives for Student Achievement," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(303), pages 505-527, July.
    14. Smith, R Todd, 1996. "Cyclical Uncertainty, Precautionary Saving and Economic Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 63(251), pages 477-494, August.
    15. Anil Markandya & Vladimir Ponczek & Soonhwa Yi, 2011. "What are the links between aid volatility and growth?," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 44(2), pages 41-68, January-M.
    16. M. Ayhan Kose & Eswar S. Prasad & Marco E. Terrones, 2005. "Growth and Volatility in an Era of Globalization," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(si), pages 31-63.
    17. Hudson, John, 2015. "Consequences of Aid Volatility for Macroeconomic Management and Aid Effectiveness," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 62-74.
    18. Michal Chervin & Sweder van Wijnbergen, 2010. "Economic Growth and the Volatility of Foreign Aid," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-002/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    19. Kathavate, Jay & Mallik, Girijasankar, 2012. "The impact of the Interaction between institutional quality and aid volatility on growth: theory and evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 716-724.
    20. Kodama, Masahiro, 2012. "Aid Unpredictability and Economic Growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 266-272.
    21. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    22. Neanidis, Kyriakos C. & Varvarigos, Dimitrios, 2009. "The allocation of volatile aid and economic growth: Theory and evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 447-462, December.
    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. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2023. "The Quality of Aid for Trade Flows and Economic Complexity," EconStor Preprints 271538, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Pengfei Jia & King Yoong Lim, 2021. "The stabilization role of police spending in a neo‐Keynesian economy with credit market imperfections," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(1), pages 103-125, February.
    3. Leighton Vaughan Williams & Chunping Liu & Hannah Gerrard, 2019. "How well do Elo-based ratings predict professional tennis matches?," NBS Discussion Papers in Economics 2019/03, Economics, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University.
    4. Lim, King Yoong, 2019. "Modelling the dynamics of corruption and unemployment with heterogeneous labour," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 98-117.

    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. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2023. "The Quality of Aid for Trade Flows and Economic Complexity," EconStor Preprints 271538, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Chen, Hong & Singh, Baljeet, 2016. "Official Development Assistance, Public Investment and Economic Growth in Asia and the Pacific," International Journal of Development and Conflict, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, vol. 6(2), pages 73-96.
    3. Boateng, Elliot & Agbola, Frank W. & Mahmood, Amir, 2021. "Foreign aid volatility and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does institutional quality matter?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 111-127.
    4. Hudson, John, 2015. "Consequences of Aid Volatility for Macroeconomic Management and Aid Effectiveness," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 62-74.
    5. Kathavate, Jay, 2013. "Direct & Indirect Effects of Aid Volatility on Growth: Do Stronger Institutions Play a Role?," MPRA Paper 45187, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Jonas Gamso & Jikuo Lu & Farhod Yuldashev, 2021. "Does foreign aid volatility increase international migration?," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 581-598, July.
    7. Hudson, John, 2015. "Consequences of Aid Volatility for Macroeconomic Management and Aid Effectiveness," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 62-74.
    8. Guillaumont, Patrick & Guillaumont Jeanneney, Sylviane & Wagner, Laurent, 2017. "How to Take into Account Vulnerability in Aid Allocation Criteria and Lack of Human Capital as Well: Improving the Performance Based Allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 27-40.
    9. Jean-François Brun & Sèna Kimm Gnangnon, 2019. "Tax reform, public revenue and public revenue instability in developing countries: Does development aid matter?," Working Papers halshs-02089734, HAL.
    10. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-35 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Aurore Gary & Mathilde Maurel, 2013. "The effect of donors' policy coherence on growth," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00825816, HAL.
    12. Ahiteme N. Houndonougbo, 2017. "Aid Volatility and Real Business Cycles in a Developing Open Economy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(3), pages 756-773, January.
    13. Sèna Kimm Gnangnon, 2020. "Effect of Aid for Trade Unpredictability on Trade Policy in Recipient-Countries," Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice, , vol. 19(2), pages 177-203, December.
    14. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2022. "Internet, Participation in International Trade, and Tax Revenue Instability," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 37(2), pages 267-315.
    15. Baris Alpaslan, 2015. "Public Spending and Transitional Dynamics of an Innovation-Based Growth Model," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 199, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    16. Agénor, Pierre-Richard & Dinh, Hinh T., 2015. "Social capital, product imitation and growth with learning externalities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 41-54.
    17. Agénor, Pierre-Richard & Aizenman, Joshua, 2010. "Aid volatility and poverty traps," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-7, January.
    18. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2021. "Aid for trade unpredictability and trade-related government expenditure in recipient-countries," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 107-125.
    19. Patrick Guillaumont & Laurent Wagner, 2014. "Aid Effectiveness for Poverty Reduction: Lessons from Cross‑country Analyses, with a Special Focus on Vulnerable Countries," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(HS01), pages 217-261.
    20. Chang, Shinhye & Gupta, Rangan & Miller, Stephen M. & Wohar, Mark E., 2019. "Growth volatility and inequality in the U.S.: A wavelet analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 521(C), pages 48-73.
    21. Francois Cornelius Wehncke & Patricia Lindelwa Makoni & Godfrey Marozva, 2022. "Nexus Between FDI, ODA and Economic Growth in Developing African Countries: A Systems Approach," Economic Research Guardian, Weissberg Publishing, vol. 12(2), pages 97-114, December.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jhucap:doi:10.1086/710321. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JHC .

    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.