The conclusion that foreign aid will promote economic growth only when allocated towards good policy regimes has been the subject of considerable debate. Aid effectiveness researchers have variously sought to falsify this result or to find other individual conditions of aid effectiveness. However, economic theory suggests that any factor which influences the expected returns to investment may influence the effect of aid on growth even when aid is partly diverted to consumption. To investigate this hypothesis, “all” of the hypothesized conditions of aid effectiveness are individually tested in a cross-country growth specification. From these tests the most significant and robust individual interactions are simultaneously modeled, thereby deriving multiple conditions of aid effectiveness. The paper concludes that aid is more effective in economies experiencing economic shocks or recovering from war, and less effective in countries which are geographically disadvantaged or at war. We also find a previously unidentified condition of aid ineffectiveness: the inflow of foreign direct investment. This finding renews a justified interest in the policy-aid-growth nexus, insofar as domestic policy determines the distribution of aid and FDI flows, which appear to act as substitutes in the growth process.
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Paper provided by School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia in its series CEPA Working Papers Series with number
WP082004.
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.:
Craig Burnside & David Dollar, 2000.
"Aid, Policies, and Growth,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Renard, Robrecht & Cassimon, Danny, 2001.
"On the Pitfalls of Measuring Aid,"
Working Papers
UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
[Downloadable!]
Lensink, Robert & White, Howard, 1999.
"Are there negative returns to aid?,"
Research Report
99E60, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
[Downloadable!]
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