Why do donor countries give foreign aid? The answers found in the literature are:
(i) because donor countries care for recipient countries (e.g. altruism), and/or (ii)
because there exist distortions that make the indirect gains from foreign aid (e.g.
terms of trade effects) to be larger than the direct losses. This paper proposes a
third answer to the above question, namely that aid is determined through the
domestic political process of the donor country. The paper demonstrates how
foreign aid affects the donor country’s income distribution and how, in a direct
democracy, the majority of voters might benefit from foreign aid giving even
though the country’s social welfare is reduced.
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Paper provided by Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
04-1999.
Length: 20 pages Date of creation: 02 Mar 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:1999_004
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3 C, 5. sal, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: 38 15 25 75 Fax: 38 15 26 65 Email: Web page: http://www.cbs.dk/departments/econ/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Lars Nondal).
Wolfgang Mayer & Pascalis Raimondos-Møller, .
"The Politics of Foreign Aid,"
EPRU Working Paper Series
99-07, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
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