IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jintdv/v19y2007i7p927-948.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Learning from structural adjustment: why selectivity may not be the key to successful programmes in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Farhad Noorbakhsh

    (Department of Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)

  • Alberto Paloni

    (Department of Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)

Abstract

Many donors have come to view selectivity in aid allocation-particularly towards countries with good governance-as the key for improving aid effectiveness. This position draws support from research according to which the success of policy reforms depends exclusively on domestic political economy factors. This finding has recently been questioned, however. This paper makes an original contribution to the literature with its attempt to identify the determinants of compliance with World Bank conditionality by employing publicly available data which evaluate a country's compliance directly. Our analysis suggests that poor compliance is not exclusively determined by exogenous factors, which the World Bank cannot influence, but is also a consequence of poor policy design. Better design of reform programmes is essential for greater aid effectiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Farhad Noorbakhsh & Alberto Paloni, 2007. "Learning from structural adjustment: why selectivity may not be the key to successful programmes in Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(7), pages 927-948.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:19:y:2007:i:7:p:927-948
    DOI: 10.1002/jid.1357
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/jid.1357
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jid.1357?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ariel BUIRA, 2003. "An Analysis Of Imf Conditionality," G-24 Discussion Papers 22, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    2. Rudiger Dornbusch, 1991. "Credibility and Stabilization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(3), pages 837-850.
    3. Dollar, David & Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "What Explains the Success or Failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 894-917, October.
    4. 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.
    5. Noorbakhsh, Farhad & Paloni, Alberto, 2001. "Structural Adjustment and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Importance of Complying with Conditionality," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(3), pages 479-509, April.
    6. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-959, July.
    7. Mosley, Paul & Subasat, Turan & Weeks, John, 1995. "Assessing adjustment in Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(9), pages 1459-1473, September.
    8. Paul Mosley & John Hudson & Arjan Verschoor, 2004. "Aid, Poverty Reduction and the 'New Conditionality'," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(496), pages 217-243, June.
    9. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    10. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
    11. Tony Killick, 1996. "Principals, Agents and the Limitations of BWI Conditionality," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 211-229, March.
    12. Mr. Alex Mourmouras & Anna Ivanova & Mr. George C Anayiotos & Mr. Wolfgang Mayer, 2003. "What Determines the Implementation of IMF-Supported Programs?," IMF Working Papers 2003/008, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Knight, Malcolm & Santaella, Julio A., 1997. "Economic determinants of IMF financial arrangements," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 405-436, December.
    14. William Easterly & Jozef Ritzen & Michael Woolcock, 2006. "Social Cohesion, Institutions, And Growth," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 103-120, July.
    15. Mark McGillivray, 2003. "Aid Effectiveness and Selectivity: Integrating Multiple Objectives into Aid Allocations," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2003-71, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Nelson, Forrest & Olson, Lawrence, 1978. "Specification and Estimation of a Simultaneous-Equation Model with Limited Dependent Variables," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 19(3), pages 695-709, October.
    17. Farhad Noorbakhsh & Alberto Paloni, 1998. "Structural adjustment programmes and export supply response," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 555-573.
    18. Morris Goldstein & Peter Montiel, 1986. "Evaluating Fund Stabilization Programs with Multicountry Data: Some Methodological Pitfalls (Evaluation des programmes de stabilisation du Fonds à partir de données sur divers pays: quelques écueils," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 33(2), pages 304-344, June.
    19. Paul Mosley, 2001. "The IMF After the Asian Crisis: Merits and Limitations of the ‘Long‐term Development Partner’ Role," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 597-629, May.
    20. Olson, Mancur, 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 567-576, September.
    21. Peter Kennedy, 2003. "A Guide to Econometrics, 5th Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 5, volume 1, number 026261183x, 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. Lodewijk Smets & Stephen Knack & Nadia Molenaers, 2013. "Political ideology, quality at entry and the success of economic reform programs," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 447-476, December.

    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. Jac C. Heckelman & Stephen Knack, 2008. "Foreign Aid and Market‐Liberalizing Reform," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(299), pages 524-548, August.
    2. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    3. Villanger, Espen, 2006. "Company interests and foreign aid policy: Playing donors off against one another," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 533-545, April.
    4. Hagen, Rune Jansen, 2014. "Rents and the Political Economy of Development Aid," Working Papers in Economics 07/14, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    5. Yuan K. Chou & Hayat Khan, 2004. "Explaining Africa's Growth Tragedy: A Theoretical Model of Dictatorship and Kleptocracy," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 922, The University of Melbourne.
    6. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    7. Svensson, Jakob, 2003. "Why conditional aid does not work and what can be done about it?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 381-402, April.
    8. Mark McGillivray, 2003. "Efficacité de l'aide et sélectivité : vers un concept élargi," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 11(4), pages 43-62.
    9. Hicks, Robert L. & Parks, Bradley C. & Tierney, Michael J., 2005. "Explaining the Allocation of Bilateral and Multilateral Environmental Aid to Developing Countries," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19346, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    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. Espen Villanger, 2003. "Company influence on foreign aid disbursement: Is conditionality credible when donors have mixed motives?," CMI Working Papers WP 2003:4, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
    12. Mark McGillivray, 2006. "Aid Allocation and Fragile States," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2006-01, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric, 2011. "Can reserve additions in mature crude oil provinces attenuate peak oil?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 5755-5764.
    14. Marchesi, Silvia & Sabani, Laura, 2007. "IMF concern for reputation and conditional lending failure: Theory and empirics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 640-666, November.
    15. Suzuki, Mao, 2020. "Profits before patients? Analyzing donors’ economic motives for foreign aid in the health sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    16. Jim Rose & Simon Hay, 2001. "Three Steps Towards More Effective Development Assistance," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/26, New Zealand Treasury.
    17. Paul A. Raschky & Manijeh Schwindt, 2016. "Aid, Catastrophes and the Samaritan's Dilemma," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 624-645, October.
    18. Farhad Noorbakhsh & Alberto Paloni, 2000. "Evaluating economic liberalization by Mark McGillivary and Oliver Morrissey (eds). (London, Macmillan Press and New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999, pp. x+240)," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(7), pages 1047-1049.
    19. Nagae, Akira & Katayama, Hajime & Takase, Koichi, 2022. "Donor aid allocation and accounting standards of recipients," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    20. Ms. Uma Ramakrishnan & Mr. Alun H. Thomas, 2006. "The Incidence and Effectiveness of Prior Actions in IMF-supported Programs," IMF Working Papers 2006/213, International Monetary Fund.

    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:wly:jintdv:v:19:y:2007:i:7:p:927-948. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/5102/home .

    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.