Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

How should donors give foreign aid? Project aid versus budget support

Contents:

Author Info

  • Izabela Jelovac

    (GATE - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines)

  • Frieda Vandeninden

    (MGSoG - Maastricht Graduate School of Governance - Universiteit Maastricht)

Abstract

We develop a theoretical model to compare the two major foreign aid modalities: project aid and budget support. These two modalities have a different impact on the production of ‘developmental goods'. Firstly, conditionality can be associated with budget support, but only a subset of the developmental expenses – the observable ones – can be subject to conditionality. Secondly, when using project aid, the donors control the overall allocation of the aid resources. However, we consider that, because of limited harmonisation and coordination, project aid can be associated with a cost of imperfect fit. We develop a unified framework to compare these two modalities where we allow the simultaneous utilisation of both instruments. We show that all the aid should be given via budget support, no matter whether conditionality is used or not. Furthermore, we show that the optimal use of conditionality depends on the recipient's developmental preferences, the productivity of the inputs and the level of aid compared to the recipient's budget: when these parameters are relatively high, conditionality should be enforced. Otherwise, the optimal aid allocation is such that all the aid is given through unconditional budget support. We conclude that conditionality does not always improve the aid effectiveness.

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://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/31/30/PDF/0813.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by HAL in its series Post-Print with number halshs-00293130.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00293130

Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00293130/en/
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/

Related research

Keywords: conditionality - foreign aid - optimal contract;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:
as in new window
  1. Hefeker, Carsten, 2004. "Project Aid or Budget Aid? The Interests of Governments and Financial Institutions," HWWA Discussion Papers 309, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
  2. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
  3. Azam, Jean-Paul & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 2003. "Contracting for aid," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 25-58, February.
  4. Tito Cordella & Giovanni Dell'Ariccia, 2007. "Budget Support Versus Project Aid: A Theoretical Appraisal," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1260-1279, October.
  5. Finn Tarp, 2006. "Aid and Development," Discussion Papers 06-12, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
  6. Raghuram G. Rajan & Arvind Subramanian, 2005. "What Undermines Aid's Impact on Growth?," NBER Working Papers 11657, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. William Easterly, 2003. "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 23-48, Summer.
  8. 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.
  9. Collier, Paul & Dollar, David, 1999. "Aid allocation and poverty reduction," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2041, The World Bank.
  10. Torsvik, Gaute, 2005. "Foreign economic aid; should donors cooperate?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 503-515, August.
  11. Svensson, Jakob, 1998. "Foreign aid and rent-seeking," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1880, The World Bank.
  12. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
  13. Hansen, Henrik & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Aid and growth regressions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 547-570, April.
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Paul Clist & Alessia Isopi & Oliver Morrissey, 2012. "Selectivity on aid modality: Determinants of budget support from multilateral donors," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 267-284, September.
  2. Bah, El-hadj M. & Ward, Jeremy, 2011. "Effectiveness of foreign aid in Small Island Developing States," MPRA Paper 32062, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00293130

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (CCSD).

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.