IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

When is Foreign Aid Policy Credible? - Aid Dependence and Conditionality

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Svensson, Jakob

    ()

    (The World Bank)

Abstract

In spite a vast amount of both theoretical and empirical work on foreign assistance and development, little is known about the incentive effects of aid. In fact, recent surveys of aid only briefly mention the possibility of moral hazard situations in the recipient-donor relation, but conclude that conditionality is a way to deal with the problem. However, in this paper we show that an aid contract, as proposed in the literature, is not time-consistent. This may be one explanation for the poor results of the vast amount of foreign aid disbursed to the developing world. Moreover, we show that tied aid, or delegation to a donor agency with less aversion to poverty may improve the equilibrium for all parties in the discretionary environment. Finally, we provide some evidence supporting the basic idea of the paper, namely that aid induces weak fiscal discipline and that increased fiscal difficulties lead to higher inflow of aid.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.

File URL: http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:327092/FULLTEXT01
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies in its series Seminar Papers with number 600.

as
in new window

Length: 37 pages
Date of creation: 05 Nov 1997
Publication status: Published in Journal of Development Economics, 2000, pages 61-84.
Handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0600
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

Phone: +46-8-162000
Fax: +46-8-161443
Web page: http://www.iies.su.se/

More information through EDIRC

Keywords: foreign aid; moral hazard; tied aid; fiscal discipline; fiscal difficulties; inflow of aid;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid

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.:

as
in new window


  1. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jorgen W, 1988. "Altruism and Time Consistency: The Economics of Fait Accompli," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(6), pages 1165-1182, December.
  2. János Kornai, 2014. "The soft budget constraint," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 64(supplemen), pages 25-79, November.
  3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics,in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482 Elsevier.
  4. Mosley, Paul & Hudson, John & Horrell, Sara, 1987. "Aid, the Public Sector and the Market in Less Developed Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 97(387), pages 616-641, September.
  5. Pedersen, Karl R, 1996. " Aid, Investment and Incentives," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(3), pages 423-438.
  6. Frey, Bruno S. & Schneider, Friedrich, 1986. "Competing models of international lending activity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 225-245, March.
  7. Coate, Stephen, 1995. "Altruism, the Samaritan's Dilemma, and Government Transfer Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 46-57, March.
  8. Summers, Lawrence H & Pritchett, Lant H, 1993. "The Structural-Adjustment Debate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 383-389, May.
  9. Rudiger Dornbusch, 1991. "Credibility and Stabilization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(3), pages 837-850.
  10. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
  11. Griffin, Keith, 1970. "Foreign Capital, Domestic Savings and Economic Development," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 32(2), pages 99-112, May.
  12. Rodrik, Dani, 1995. "Why is there Multilateral Lending?," CEPR Discussion Papers 1207, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  13. M. Dewatripont & E. Maskin, 1995. "Credit and Efficiency in Centralized and Decentralized Economies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(4), pages 541-555.
  14. Casella, Alessandra & Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Can Foreign Aid Accelerate Stabilisation?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(436), pages 605-619, May.
  15. Dudley, Leonard & Montmarquette, Claude, 1976. "A Model of the Supply of Bilateral Foreign Aid," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 132-142, March.
  16. T. S. Breusch & A. R. Pagan, 1980. "The Lagrange Multiplier Test and its Applications to Model Specification in Econometrics," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 47(1), pages 239-253.
  17. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
  18. Qian, Yingyi & Roland, Gérard, 1994. "Regional Decentralization and the Soft Budget Constraint: The Case of China," CEPR Discussion Papers 1013, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  19. Mosley, Paul, 1985. "The Political Economy of Foreign Aid: A Model of the Market for a Public Good," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 373-393, January.
  20. Pedersen, K.R., 1993. "On Development Aid and Low-Investment Traps," Papers 08-93, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration-.
  21. Maizels, Alfred & Nissanke, Machiko K., 1984. "Motivations for aid to developing countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 12(9), pages 879-900, September.
  22. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1994. "The Political Economy of Budget Deficits," NBER Working Papers 4637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  23. Alesina, Alberto & Tabellini, Guido, 1988. "Credibility and politics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2-3), pages 542-550, March.
  24. Trumbull, William N & Wall, Howard J, 1994. "Estimating Aid-Allocation Criteria with Panel Data," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 876-882, July.
  25. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1989. "The Economics of Uncertainty and Information," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121360, July.
  26. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1996. "Federal Fiscal Constitutions: Risk Sharing and Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(3), pages 623-646, May.
  27. Gang, Ira N. & Lehman, James A., 1990. "New directions or not: USAID in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 723-732, May.
  28. Feyzioglu, Tarhan & Swaroop, Vinaya & Min Zhu, 1996. "Foreign aid's impact on public spending," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1610, The World Bank.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0600. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Hanna Christiansson)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.