Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are widely expected to provide better targeted aid than state agencies with a hidden agenda of commercial and political self-interest. However, principal-agent models question that NGOs decide autonomously on aid allocation. Indeed, we show empirically that NGO aid offers no panacea: The focus of NGOs on the neediest recipients turns out to be surprisingly weak. NGOs hardly make use of the perceived comparative advantage of working in “difficult environments.” Rather, they are strongly inclined to follow the herd of other NGOs and mimic the allocation behaviour of state agencies, especially if they depend on public co-financing
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Kiel Institute for the World Economy in its series Kiel Working Papers with number
1484.