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Leland & Pyle Meet Foreign Aid? Adverse Selection and the Procyclicality of Financial Aid Flows

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  • Stéphane Pallage
  • Michel A. Robe

Abstract

Official development assistance (grants and subsidized loans from foreign aid agencies) is the main source of external finance in developing countries. These financial aid flows are positively correlated with the recipients' business cycles, which is puzzling because it reinforces already strong and costly macroeconomic fluctuations in the recipient countries. We propose an explanation related to a familiar corporate finance theory of inside equity commitments. We assume that donor agencies and recipient governments value projects differently, and that donors know less than recipients do about projects. We show that donors can make an aid recipient idientify high-return projects by conditioning aid on the recipient's committing some of its own funds to the selected projects. This commitment makes recommending bad projects costly. Contributing "counterpart funds" is more difficult during economic downturns, however - which leads to aid procyclicality. This simple model of investment financing and aid provision produces aid contracts consistent with those used by aid agencies, rationalizes observed aid flow patterns, and yields a rich set of testable empirical predictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Stéphane Pallage & Michel A. Robe, 2003. "Leland & Pyle Meet Foreign Aid? Adverse Selection and the Procyclicality of Financial Aid Flows," Cahiers de recherche 0327, CIRPEE.
    • Handle: RePEc:lvl:lacicr:0327
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Eifert, Benn & Gelb, Alan, 2008. "Reforming Aid: Toward More Predictable, Performance-Based Financing for Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 2067-2081, October.
    2. Kletzer, Kenneth, 2005. "Aid and Sanctions," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5hq5d9gp, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    3. Wezel, Torsten, 2004. "Does co-financing by multilateral development banks increase "risky" direct investment in emerging markets?," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2004,02, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    4. Eifert, Benn & Gelb, Alan, 2005. "Improving the dynamics of aid : towards more predictable budget support," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3732, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Aid; Altruism; Adverse selection; Counterpart funds; Capital flow procyclicality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

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