IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea08/6356.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Foreign Aid Beneficial for Sub-Saharan Africa? A Panel Data Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Armah, Stephen E.
  • Nelson, Carl H.

Abstract

Significant ambiguity surrounds the magnitude and sign of the effect of foreign aid on economic growth. Foreign aid can potentially augment scarce domestic capital to spur growth but foreign aid can also remove positive incentive to build wealth, stalling growth. This paper characterizes the effect of foreign aid on the growth of Sub-Saharan African countries after correcting endogeneity problems that plague the estimation. Foreign aid is found to be growth promoting given good governance and using fixed effects in a static panel framework. Data from twenty-one Sub-Saharan African countries spanning 1995-2003 was used in the estimation. The finding of a significant foreign aid-growth relationship is pertinent because it suggests that increased aid to Sub Saharan Africa is one way to achieve the UN’s Millennium goals. By lobbying for increased foreign aid, advocates are prescribing a necessary albeit insufficient medicine for Sub Saharan Africa’s economic problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Armah, Stephen E. & Nelson, Carl H., 2008. "Is Foreign Aid Beneficial for Sub-Saharan Africa? A Panel Data Analysis," 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida 6356, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea08:6356
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.6356
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/6356/files/467246.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.6356?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Roodman, 2007. "The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development, and Cross-Country Empirics," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 255-277, May.
    2. Keith Griffin and Terry McKinley, 1994. "A New Framework for Development Cooperation," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-1994-04, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    3. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
    4. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, April.
    5. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    6. Muhammed Islam, 2005. "Regime changes, economic policies and the effect of aid on growth," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(8), pages 1467-1492.
    7. Richard Blundell & Stephen Bond, 2000. "GMM Estimation with persistent panel data: an application to production functions," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 321-340.
    8. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    9. Hansen, Henrik & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Aid and growth regressions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 547-570, April.
    10. Robert Lensink & Howard White, 2000. "Aid allocation, poverty reduction and the Assessing Aid report," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(3), pages 399-412, April.
    11. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
    12. William Easterly, 2003. "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 23-48, Summer.
    13. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Henrik Hansen & Finn Tarp, 2004. "On The Empirics of Foreign Aid and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(496), pages 191-216, June.
    14. Eskander Alvi & Debasri Mukherjee & Elias Kedir Shukralla, 2008. "Aid, Policies, and Growth in Developing Countries: A New Look at the Empirics," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 74(3), pages 693-706, January.
    15. Arellano, Cristina & Bulír, Ales & Lane, Timothy & Lipschitz, Leslie, 2009. "The dynamic implications of foreign aid and its variability," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 87-102, January.
    16. Nazrul Islam, 1995. "Growth Empirics: A Panel Data Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(4), pages 1127-1170.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2016. "Is the Threat of Foreign Aid Withdrawal an Effective Deterrent to Political Oppression? Evidence from 53 African Countries," Research Africa Network Working Papers 16/020, Research Africa Network (RAN).
    2. Thi Hong Hanh Pham, 2015. "Income Inequality and Foreign Aid," Working Papers hal-01158240, HAL.
    3. Workneh, Migbaru Alamirew & Francken, Nathalie, 2015. "A review of the impact of foreign aid on domestic saving," MPRA Paper 92174, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 Feb 2019.
    4. Muhammad Nayaz & Javed Husain, 2013. "Pakistan’s Monetary Aid Concerns," South Asian Journal of Management Sciences (SAJMS), Iqra University, Iqra University, vol. 7(1), pages 31-34, Spring.
    5. Nelson C. Nkalu & Richardson K. Edeme & Winnie O. Arazu, 2019. "Foreign Aids and Sustainable Growth in Africa: Evidence from Nigeria," International Journal of Applied Economics, Finance and Accounting, Online Academic Press, vol. 5(2), pages 84-88.
    6. Workneh, Migbaru Alamirew, 2018. "Poverty and unemployment in Spain during the 2008's financial crises," MPRA Paper 92145, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Juan J. DelaCruz, 2018. "Foreign Aid and HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean: Should We Adjust the Degree of Response?," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 46(3), pages 337-349, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    2. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2012. "Aid, Growth and Devolution," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1723-1749.
    3. Juergen Bitzer & Erkan Goeren, 2018. "Foreign Aid and Subnational Development: A Grid Cell Analysis," Working Papers V-407-18, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2018.
    4. Sharri Byron, 2012. "Examining Foreign Aid Fungibility in Small Open Economies," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 675-712, September.
    5. Juliana Yael Milovich, 2018. "Does Aid Reduce Poverty?," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp122.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    6. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann & Axel Dreher & Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, 2012. "Does foreign aid really raise per capita income? A time series perspective," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(1), pages 288-313, February.
    7. Kourtellos, Andros & Tan, Chih Ming & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2007. "Is the relationship between aid and economic growth nonlinear?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 515-540, September.
    8. Angeles, Luis & Neanidis, Kyriakos C., 2009. "Aid effectiveness: the role of the local elite," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 120-134, September.
    9. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric, 2011. "Can reserve additions in mature crude oil provinces attenuate peak oil?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 5755-5764.
    10. Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2009. "Aid effectiveness for poverty reduction: macroeconomic overview and emerging issues," Working Papers P05, FERDI.
    11. Roland Hodler, 2007. "Rent seeking and aid effectiveness," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(5), pages 525-541, October.
    12. Kyriakos C. Neanidis & Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2007. "The Allocation of volatile aid and economic growth: Evidence and a suggestive theory," Discussion Paper Series 2007_07, Department of Economics, Loughborough University, revised Mar 2007.
    13. Scholl, Almuth, 2005. "Aid effectiveness and limited enforceable conditionality," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2005-054, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    14. Georgios Karras, 2006. "Foreign aid and long-run economic growth: empirical evidence for a panel of developing countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 15-28.
    15. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2009. "Aid and Growth: Have We Come Full Circle?," Discussion Papers 09-22, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    16. Xin Geng & Carlos Martins-Filho & Feng Yao, 2015. "Estimation of a Partially Linear Regression in Triangular Systems," Working Papers 15-46, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    17. Almuth Scholl, 2009. "Aid Effectiveness and Limited Enforceable Conditionality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 377-391, April.
    18. Museru, Malimu & Toerien, Francois & Gossel, Sean, 2014. "The Impact of Aid and Public Investment Volatility on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 138-147.
    19. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2009. "Aid, growth and decentralization," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 09/09, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    20. Simeon Djankov & Jose Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2008. "The curse of aid," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 169-194, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food Security and Poverty;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea08:6356. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.