The Impact of Aid on Growth an aid disaggregation approach

This paper investigates the impact of aid on growth. A clear departure from the vast majority of the existing literature is that we a disaggregate aid by functional classification. Using the GMM SYS approach to dynamic panel estimator we test the three main competing specifications in the aid and growth literature for a sample of aid recipient countries over the 1974-2001 period. Our results clearly show that the different categories of aid exert different effects on growth. Indeed, we find that project aid exerts a positive and significant impact on growth whilst financial programme aid generally impacts on growth negatively. Our results also show that the impact of non-financial aid, technical assistance grants and food aid, is statistically insignificant. We found, however, no evidence to suggest that policy enhances the growth effect of the aid categories. Our non-linearity tests suggest that only project aid is associated with diminishing returns. Finally, our results confirm the finding that climate related conditions affect the working of aid (project). --Aid,Growth,Dynamic Panel Methods

The Impact of Climatic Change on Agricultural Production: Is it different for Africa?

This paper examines the impact of climatic change on the level of total agricultural production of Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) and non-Sub-Sahara Africa (NSSA) developing countries. In doing so it uses a new cross-country panel climatic dataset in an agricultural production framework. The results show that climate, measured as changes in country-wide rainfall and temperature, has been a major determinant of agricultural production in SSA. In contrast, NSSA countries appear not to be affected by climate in the same manner. Simulations using the estimates suggest that the detrimental changes in climate since the 1960s can account for a substantial portion of the gap in agricultural production between SSA and the rest of the developing world.Climate change, Africa, Agriculture

Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor’s choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted transfers may be used, among others, to control a recipient’s moral hazard behavior but may be associated with deadweight losses. Within the context of foreign aid, we use a canonical political agency model to construct a simple signaling game between a possibly corrupt politician in a recipient country and a donor to illustrate the donor’s optimal choice of tied (restricted) and untied foreign aid. We clarify the condition under which a reduction in the recipient’s moral hazard behavior (i.e., improvement in the level of governance) leads to a fall in the proportion of tied aid. We test the predictions of our theoretical analysis using data on the composition of foreign aid by multilateral and bilateral donors.tied foreign aid; governance; moral hazard; political agency; restricted transfer

Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor’s choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted transfers may be used, among others, to control a recipient’s moral hazard behavior but may be associated with deadweight losses. Within the context of foreign aid, we use a canonical political agency model to construct a simple signaling game between a possibly corrupt politician in a recipient country and a donor to illustrate the donor’s optimal choice of tied (restricted) and untied foreign aid. We clarify the condition under which a reduction in the recipient’s moral hazard behavior (i.e., improvement in the level of governance) leads to a fall in the proportion of tied aid. We test the predictions of our theoretical analysis using data on the composition of foreign aid by multilateral and bilateral donors.tied foreign aid, governance, moral hazard, political agency, restricted transfer

Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donors choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted transfers may be used, among others, to control a recipients moral hazard behavior but may be associated with deadweight losses. Within the context of foreign aid, we use a canonical political agency model to construct a simple signaling game between a possibly corrupt politician in a recipient country and a donor to illustrate the donors optimal choice of tied (restricted) and untied foreign aid. We clarify the condition under which a reduction in the recipients moral hazard behavior (i.e., improvement in the level of governance) leads to a fall in the proportion of tied aid. We test the predictions of our theoretical analysis using data on the composition of foreign aid by multilateral and bilateral donors. --Moral Hazard,Foreign Aid,Panel Data

The Impact of Aid on Growth an aid disaggregation approach

This paper investigates the impact of aid on growth. A clear departure from the vast majority of the existing literature is that we a disaggregate aid by functional classification. Using the GMM SYS approach to dynamic panel estimator we test the three main competing specifications in the aid and growth literature for a sample of aid recipient countries over the 1974-2001 period. Our results clearly show that the different categories of aid exert different effects on growth. Indeed, we find that project aid exerts a positive and significant impact on growth whilst financial programme aid generally impacts on growth negatively. Our results also show that the impact of non-financial aid, technical assistance grants and food aid, is statistically insignificant. We found, however, no evidence to suggest that policy enhances the growth effect of the aid categories. Our non-linearity tests suggest that only project aid is associated with diminishing returns. Finally, our results confirm the finding that climate related conditions affect the working of aid (project)

Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor's choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted transfers may be used, among others, to control a recipient's moral hazard behavior but may be associated with deadweight losses. Within the context of foreign aid, we use a canonical political agency model to construct a simple signaling game between a possibly corrupt politician in a recipient country and a donor to illustrate the donor's optimal choice of tied (restricted) and untied foreign aid. We clarify the condition under which a reduction in the recipient's moral hazard behavior (i.e., improvement in the level of governance) leads to a fall in the proportion of tied aid. We test the predictions of our theoretical analysis using data on the composition of foreign aid by multilateral and bilateral donors