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Fungibility and the Impact of Development Assistance: Evidence from Vietnam's Health Sector

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Author Info
Wagstaff, Adam () (The World Bank)
Abstract

How can the impact of aid be estimated in the presence of fungibility? And how far does fungibility reduce its benefits? These questions are analyzed in a context where a donor wants to target its efforts on a specific sector and specific geographic areas. A traditional differences-in-differences method comparing the change in outcomes between the target and nontarget areas before and after the project risks misestimating the project's benefits. The paper develops an alternative estimation method in which intersectoral fungibility reduces project benefits insofar as government spending has a smaller impact in the sector to which the funds leak than in the target sector, while intrasectoral fungibility reduces benefits insofar as the donor is able to leverage productivity increases in government spending in the target areas. The methods are applied to two contemporaneous World Bank health projects that set out to target assistance on approximately one-half of Vietnam's provinces. Aid is not apparently fungible between Vietnam's health sector and other sectors, but is fungible across provinces within the health sector. Differences-in-differences yield an insignificant impact on infant mortality, while the use of the new method yields a statistically significant impact of around 4 per 1000 live births. The results, however, are ambiguous on the costs associated with intrasectoral fungibility.

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Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 4800.

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Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: 01 Dec 2008
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4800

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Keywords: foreign aid; fungibility; impact evaluation; child mortality;

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  1. Jan Pettersson, 2007. "Child Mortality: Is Aid Fungibility in Pro-Poor Expenditure Sectors Decisive?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer, vol. 143(4), pages 673-693, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. James J. Heckman & Sergio Urzua & Edward J. Vytlacil, 2006. "Understanding Instrumental Variables in Models with Essential Heterogeneity," NBER Working Papers 12574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Jan Pettersson, 2007. "Foreign sectoral aid fungibility, growth and poverty reduction," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 1074-1098. [Downloadable!]
  4. Craig Burnside & David Dollar, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. van de Walle, Dominique & Ren Mu, 2007. "Fungibility and the flypaper effect of project aid : micro-evidence for Vietnam," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4133, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Farasat A. S. Bokhari & Yunwei Gai & Pablo Gottret, 2007. "Government health expenditures and health outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 257-273. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Feyzioglu, Tarhan & Swaroop, Vinaya & Zhu, Min, 1998. "A Panel Data Analysis of the Fungibility of Foreign Aid," World Bank Economic Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 29-58, January.
  8. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-59, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Devarajan, Shantayanan & Rajkumar, Andrew Sunil & Swaroop, Vinaya, 1999. "What does aid to Africa finance?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2092, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  10. Pack, Howard & Pack, Janet Rothenberg, 1993. "Foreign Aid and the Question of Fungibility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 258-65, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Anirban Basu & James J. Heckman & Salvador Navarro-Lozano & Sergio Urzua, 2007. "Use of instrumental variables in the presence of heterogeneity and self-selection: an application to treatments of breast cancer patients," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(11), pages 1133-1157. [Downloadable!]
  12. Swaroop, Vinaya & Jha, Shikha & Sunil Rajkumar, Andrew, 2000. "Fiscal effects of foreign aid in a federal system of governance: The case of India," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 307-330, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Michael Lokshin & Zurab Sajaia, 2004. "Maximum likelihood estimation of endogenous switching regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(3), pages 282-289, September. [Downloadable!]
  14. Ravallion, Martin, 2008. "Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs," Handbook of Development Economics, Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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