What Determines the Size of Aid Projects?

Over the last few years, considerable attention has focused on aid fragmentation, the proliferation of donors and projects in developing countries. Aid fragmentation has continued to increase despite international efforts to foster donor coordination. One possible implication of fragmentation is smaller aid projects, potentially with the result of more administrative work for overtaxed recipient governments per dollar of aid received. In principle, project size can be a function of donor characteristics, recipient characteristics, donor-recipient relations, and the type of projects funded. This paper makes use of PLAID data on bilateral aid commitments, sector, and funding agency to explore the determinants of project size and to better understand the forces driving aid fragmentation. To the extent that project size is driven by the sectoral composition or purpose of aid, the associated administrative costs may be justified. Variations due to other factors, e.g., a donor's administrative structure or bureaucratic interests, provide a stronger case for reforms.Foreign Aid; Aid Fragmentation; PLAID

An empirical assessment of informal influence in the World Bank

Recent scholarship has uncovered convincing evidence of systematic donor influence in international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank. Less clear is how donors influence IFI decisions. Possible avenues are formal and informal: formal influence through official decisions of the board of executive directors and informal influence over decisions not made at the board level. This paper explores the role of informal influence at the World Bank by examining the flow of funds after loans are approved. Controlling for commitments (loan approvals), are subsequent disbursements linked to the geopolitical interests of important donors? Since the board of executive directors is formally involved in loan approval but not in disbursement decisions, this provides an interesting case to identify the avenues of influence. The results indicate the scope of reforms needed to bolster the independence of the World Bank.World Bank; Donor Influence; United States; UN voting; Informal Influence

Aid and Regulation

In recent decades, one of the objectives of international development assistance has been to encourage developing country governments to reorient their economies from highly regulated and centrally controlled to deregulated and market-based. However, poor economic performance on its own might well necessitate such a shift. Does aid from donors accelerate this process by providing additional incentives and critical resources (finance and advice)? Or do donor funds slow the retreat of the state by lessening financial crises and indirectly promoting state control (e.g., through state-run development projects)? This paper contributes to the empirical analysis of this question by examining the link between aid flows and regulatory burden. Using an instrumental variables method on panel data from 71 aid receiving countries from 1970 to 1995, estimation results support the first position. Donor funds favor more heavily regulated economies and successfully promoted deregulation. This apparent example of successful conditionality points to the importance of a more disaggregate analysis of the interaction of aid and policy in developing countries.

The Political Economy of Conditionality: An Empirical Analysis of World Bank Enforcement

Traditional aid conditionality has been attacked as ineffective in part because aid agencies--notably the World Bank--often fail to enforce conditions. This pattern undermines the credibility of conditionality, weakening incentives to implement policy reforms. The standard critique attributed this time inconsistency to bureaucratic factors within the aid agency such as pressure to lend, defensive lending, or short-sighted altruism. Pressure from powerful donors provides another potential explanation for lax enforcement. This paper presents and empirical analysis of the political economy of conditionality enforcement in international organizations using the case of the World Bank and the United States. The analysis examines panel data on World Bank disbursements to 97 countries receiving structural adjustment loans between 1984 and 2005. Using macroeconomic variables to measure compliance and UN voting as an indicator of alignment with the U.S., this paper presents evidence that the World Bank enforces structural adjustment conditions more vigorously in countries not aligned with the United States.

Donor influence in international financial institutions: Deciphering what alignment measures measure

This paper explores U.S. influence in the World Bank using panel data on World Bank lending to 148 developing countries between 1984 and 2005. I compare a range of UN alignment variables (with differing interpretations), introduce other measures of U.S. interests, and control for voting alignment with the G7 donors. Estimation results suggest that partial correlations for U.S. UN voting alignment partly reflect vote buying and partly reflect broader alliances. The results convincingly reject the hypothesis that U.S. UN voting alignment merely proxies for G7 influence in the allocation of World Bank funds.World Bank, United States, UN voting

World Bank Lending and Regulation

One of the policy reforms promoted by the World Bank in recent decades is to reduce the often burdensome level of regulation by developing country governments and thus promote a reorientation from highly regulated and centrally controlled to deregulated and market-based economies. Indeed, poor growth performance and balance of payments problems on their own might well necessitate this transformation. Does World Bank lending promote deregulation with stronger incentives and critical resources (finance and advice) or slow the process by blunting the impact of crises and indirectly promoting state control via development planning and government sponsored projects? This paper analyzes empirical links between aid flows and regulatory burden. Econometric estimates based on panel data for 83 aid receiving countries from 1970 to 2000 find that World Bank lending, while not specifically targeting high or low regulatory states, is linked to lower subsequent regulation. This link holds for multilateral donors more broadly while bilateral donor funds apparently fail to influence the level of regulation.

World Bank Borrower Relations and Project Supervision

This paper explores the relevance of the principal-agent model for analyzing development projects using data from World Bank-funded projects. After demonstrating that World Bank loan agreements can be viewed as principal-agent contracts, the paper explores the importance of the agency problem in determining project performance. Predictions from an adversarial model contrast with those of a cooperative model. The importance of information in the adversarial model links World Bank supervision to project performance. Data support the relevance of the agency problem and the role of supervision as monitoring. The paper concludes with suggestions for modifying project selection and implementation to reduce agency problems.

Optimal sorting of product into fixed weight packaging

Compac Sorting Equipment make very nifty machines for sorting fruit by weight, diameter, colour, density, blemish or even shape. Compac sought solutions to two closely related problems: the boxing problem and the bagging problem. The boxing problem requires graded fruit to be assigned to outlets where boxes are filled with a specified number of fruit to a minimum weight (and a specified tolerance for underweights). The aim is to maximise the number of boxes packed. The decision must be made after all information is known, but before the fruit passes the first outlet - a few seconds total. Further, information about fruit already packed in a given box is incomplete (we don’t know exactly which fruit ended up in a box). The bagging problem requires bags to be filled to a minimum weight - no tolerance for underweights, and no constraints on the number of fruit per bag. In this case complete information is available on fruit already assigned to a bag. Again the aim is to maximise the number of bags packed