IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6612.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Alesina
  • David Dollar

Abstract

This paper studies the pattern of allocation of foreign aid from various donors to receiving countries. We find considerable evidence that the direction of foreign aid is dictated by political and strategic considerations, much more than by the economic needs and policy performance of the recipients. Colonial past and political alliances are the major determinants of foreign aid. At the margin, however, countries that democratize receive more aid, ceteris paribus. While foreign aid flows respond more to political variables, foreign direct investments are more sensitive to economic incentives, particularly property rights in the receiving countries. We also uncover significant differences in the behavior of different donors.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Alesina & David Dollar, 1998. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," NBER Working Papers 6612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6612
    Note: IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6612.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
    2. Maizels, Alfred & Nissanke, Machiko K., 1984. "Motivations for aid to developing countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 12(9), pages 879-900, September.
    3. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew Warner, 1995. "Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(1, 25th A), pages 1-118.
    4. Frey, Bruno S. & Schneider, Friedrich, 1986. "Competing models of international lending activity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 225-245, March.
    5. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Kosack, Stephen, 2003. "Effective Aid: How Democracy Allows Development Aid to Improve the Quality of Life," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-22, January.
    2. Kalyvitis, Sarantis & Vlachaki, Irene, 2012. "When does more aid imply less democracy? An empirical examination," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 132-146.
    3. Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "When is foreign aid policy credible? Aid dependence and conditionality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 61-84, February.
    4. Iimi, Atsushi & Ojima, Yasuhisa, 2008. "Complementarities between grants and loans," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 109-141, March.
    5. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
    6. Harrigan, Jane & Wang, Chengang, 2011. "A New Approach to the Allocation of Aid Among Developing Countries: Is the USA Different from the Rest?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1281-1293, August.
    7. Chauvet, Lisa, 2003. "Socio-political instability and the allocation of international aid by donors," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 33-59, March.
    8. Scott Gates & Anke Hoeffler, 2004. "Global Aid Allocation: Are Nordic Donors Different?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2004-34, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    9. Yu Wang, 2013. "Veto Players and Foreign Aid Inflows," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 391-408, September.
    10. Harrigan, Jane & Wang, Chengang & El-Said, Hamed, 2006. "The economic and political determinants of IMF and world bank lending in the Middle East and North Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 247-270, February.
    11. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    12. Balázs Szent-Iványi, 2015. "Are Democratising Countries Rewarded with Higher Levels of Foreign Aid?," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(4), pages 593-615, December.
    13. Robert K. Fleck & Christopher Kilby, 2006. "World Bank Independence: A Model and Statistical Analysis of US Influence," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 224-240, May.
    14. Stephen Knowles, 2007. "Social capital, egalitarianism and foreign aid allocations," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 299-314.
    15. Christopher Kilby, 2006. "Donor influence in multilateral development banks: The case of the Asian Development Bank," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 173-195, June.
    16. Anwar, Mumtaz, 2005. "The Political Economy of International Financial Institutions? Lending to Pakistan," HWWA Discussion Papers 338, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
    17. Alberto Alesina & Beatrice Weder, 2002. "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1126-1137, September.
    18. Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Howard J. Wall, 2007. "The determinants of aid in the post-cold war era," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Nov), pages 533-548.
    19. Mark McGillivray, 2003. "Efficacité de l'aide et sélectivité : vers un concept élargi," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 11(4), pages 43-62.
    20. Afridi, Muhammad Asim & Ventelou, Bruno, 2013. "Impact of health aid in developing countries: The public vs. the private channels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 759-765.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:6612. 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: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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: (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.