Aid Allocation of the Emerging Central and Eastern European Donors

The paper examines the main characteristics of the (re)emerging foreign aid policies of the Visegrád countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), concentrating on the allocation of their aid resources. We adopt an econometric approach, similar to the ones used in the literature for analyzing the aid allocation of the OECD DAC donors. Using this approach, we examine the various factors that influence aid allocation of the Visegrád countries, using data for the years between 2001 and 2008. Our most important conclusion is that the amount of aid a partner county gets from the four emerging donors is not influenced by the level of poverty or the previous performance (measured by the level of economic growth or the quality of institutions) of the recipients. The main determining factor seems to be geographic proximity, as countries in the Western-Balkans and the Post-Soviet region receive much more aid from the Visegrád countries than other recipients. Historical ties (pre-1989 development relations) and international obligations in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq are also found to be significant explanatory factors. This allocation is in line with the foreign political and economic interests of these new donors. While there are clear similarities between the four donors, the paper also identifies some individual country characteristics

Cross-Sectoral Data Linkage: Tracking Mental Health Service Utilization from Childhood into Adulthood

Introduction Of the 15-18% of children and youth in Canada with a mental health disorder, some receive specialized mental health (MH) services and need additional treatment as young adults. Lack of a shared database across child and adult sectors has prevented examining predictors of future MH health service use. Objectives and Approach We examined predictors of mental health service utilization in adulthood, and compared a sample of youth who received specialized MH treatment and age-, sex-, and region- matched controls. Patient-level administrative data from five MH agencies funded by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services (MCYS) in Ontario, with population health sector datasets held at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). We expanded previous definitions of coding a MH visit by including codes specific to long-lasting childhood MH diagnoses (e.g., Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder). Results Our match rate for linking the MCYS treated youth with their population health data was 77%. Youth who received MH treatment (N= 2957) were twice as likely as matched controls (N= 8891) to have a MH visit in the medical system in adulthood (i.e., after age 18). The most common diagnostic codes for the first visit were anxiety, depressive disorders, and ADHD. The median survival time (when 50% had a visit) from age 18 to first MH visit was 3.3 years. In adjusted Cox regressions, significant predictors of having an adult MH visit included service use history in both medical and MH systems during childhood and adolescence (e.g., ongoing pattern of children’s MH service use). Conclusion/Implications This study represents the first longitudinal, case-control cohort study in Canada to examine MH service utilization in the medical sector by youth treated for MH problems. The linkage of information from multiple datasets allowed for a broader understanding of MH service utilization across sectors of care, specific to children and youth

Targeting Aid to the Needy and Deserving: Nothing But Promises?

By reallocating aid to where it is needed most and where a productive use is most likely, donors could help alleviate poverty in developing countries. The rhetoric of donors suggests that this insight has increasingly shaped the allocation of aid. However, we find little evidence supporting the view that the targeting of aid has improved significantly. Most donors provide higher aid to relatively poor countries, but so far the fight against poverty has not resulted in a stronger focus on recipient countries with particularly high incidence of absolute poverty. Many donors failed to direct aid predominantly to where local conditions were conducive to a productive use of inflows. The response of donors to changing institutional and policy conditions in recipient countries turns out to be fairly weak. In particular, we reject the proposition that multilateral donor institutions provide better targeted aid than bilateral donors

Self-interest, foreign need and good governance: are bilateral investment treaty programs similar to aid allocation?

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the most important legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. Yet practically no systematic evidence exists on what motivates capital-exporting developed countries to sign BITs earlier with some developing countries than with others, if at all. The theoretical framework from the aid allocation literature suggests that developed countries pursue a mixture of self-interest, foreign need and, possibly, good governance. We find evidence that both economic interests of developed countries’ foreign investors and political interests of developed countries determine their scheduling of BITs. However, foreign need as measured by per capita income is also a factor, whereas good governance by and large does not matter. These results suggest that BIT programs can be explained employing the same framework successfully applied to the allocation of aid. At the same time, self-interest seems to be substantively more important than developing country need when it comes to BITs