The increased policy selectivity of aid allocations observed in recent years provides aid-recipient countries with an incentive to improve policies. The paper estimates that a change in the World ...Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment policy index from 1.5 to 2 for a recipient is associated with an increase of about 13 percent in aid. The analysis also finds a modest but statistically significant positive relationship between the global level of policy-selective aid and policy, suggesting that policy-selective aid improves policies in aid-recipient countries. This effect is properly identified, as the level of policy-selective aid in the global aid budget is exogenous to a recipient country's policy choice. Furthermore, the paper provides a game-theoretic model that establishes the link between the policy selectivity of the global budget and better recipient-country policies in equilibrium.
Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, have become popular in comparative political analysis. Few studies examine the validity or reliability of these ...indexes. To partially fill this gap, this study uses factor, confirmatory factor and path analysis to test both measurement and causal models of the six Worldwide Governance indicators. They purportedly measure distinct concepts of control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, rule quality, political stability, and voice and accountability. Rather than distinguishing among aspects of the quality of governance, we find that they appear to be measuring the same broad concept.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Aid potentially can contribute to democratization in several ways: (1) through technical assistance focusing on electoral processes, the strengthening of legislatures and judiciaries as checks on ...executive power, and the promotion of civil society organizations, including a free press; (2) through conditionality; and (3) by improving education and increasing per capita incomes, which research shows are conducive to democratization. This study provides a multivariate analysis of the impact of aid on democratization in a large sample of recipient nations over the 1975-2000 period. Using two different democracy indexes and two different measures of aid intensity, no evidence is found that aid promotes democracy. This result is robust to alternative model specifications and estimation techniques, including the use of exogenous instruments for aid. Results are similar if the analysis is confined to the post-Cold War period (1990-2000), despite the reduced dependence of the U.S. and other donors on pro-Western authoritarian regimes among aid recipient nations.
The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of recipient country systems for managing aid. The target is premised on a view that country systems are ...strengthened when donors trust recipients to manage aid funds, but undermined when donors manage aid through their own separate parallel systems. This study provides an analytical framework for understanding donors' decisions to trust or bypass country systems. Empirical tests are conducted using data from three OECD-DAC surveys designed to monitor progress toward Paris Declaration goals. Tests show that use of recipient country systems is positively related to (1) the donor's reputational stake in the country's development, as proxied by the donor's share of aid provided to the recipient; (2) the trustworthiness or quality of those systems, as measured by cross-country corruption indicators; and (3) donors' risk tolerance, as proxied by public support for aid provision in donor countries. Findings are robust to corrections for potential sample selection, omitted variables or endogeneity bias.
There is little systematic evidence on the links between procurement systems and outcomes such as competition and corruption levels. This paper adds to the evidence, using data on 34,000 firms from ...the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, in 90 countries with procurement systems data from Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments. We find that in countries with better public access to complete, reliable, and timely procurement information, firms are more likely to participate in public procurement markets. Firms report paying less in kickbacks to officials in countries where exceptions to open competition in tendering must be explicitly justified, and where there are effective and independent complaints mechanisms. These findings–particularly on kickbacks–are robust to the inclusion of numerous controls and to a range of sensitivity tests. However, due to data limitations we are unable to rule out the possibility that these estimates may reflect in part endogeneity bias.
The 2005 Paris Declaration committed donors to increased use of recipient country systems for managing aid, particularly in countries with higher-quality systems. Using indicators explicitly endorsed ...by the Paris Declaration and covering the 2005-2010 period, this study finds a positive, significant, and robust relationship between quality of systems and their use by donors. Thus, donors appear to have modified at least some of their aid practices in ways that build rather than undermine administrative capacity and accountability mechanisms in recipient countries. However, quality of systems explains a relatively small share of the variation in their use, and there is considerable heterogeneity among donors in their use of country systems, and in their sensitivity to quality of systems.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
We analyze the impact of donor fragmentation on the quality of government bureaucracy in aid-recipient nations. A formal model of a donor's decision to hire government administrators to manage ...donor-funded projects predicts that the number of administrators hired declines as the donor's share of other projects in the country increases, and as the donor's concern for the success of other donors' projects increases. The model's predictions are consistent with results from cross-country empirical tests, using an index of bureaucratic quality available for aid-recipient nations over the 1982–2001 period.
We show that public investment is dramatically higher in countries with low-quality governance and limited political checks and balances or no competitive elections. This result is robust to a number ...of specifications. The most plausible interpretation of these results is that these governments use public investment as a vehicle to increase their rent-seeking. This evidence suggests that efforts to increase public investment in countries with weak governance, or to measure the growth effects of productive public investment using only observed measures of public investment, should be undertaken with caution.
This study analyzes theoretically and empirically the impact of aid fragmentation on donors’ decisions to tie their development aid to purchases from contractors based in their own countries. ...Building on collective action theory, it argues that a donor with a larger share of the aid market in a country has stronger incentives to maximize the development impact of its aid, by tying less of it. Empirical tests strongly and consistently support the prediction that higher donor aid shares will be associated with less aid tying. This finding is robust to recipient controls, donor fixed effects, and instrumental variables estimation. Furthermore, it contradicts other studies suggesting that when a small number of donors dominate the aid market in a country, they may exploit their monopoly power by tying more of their aid.
The determinants of public opinion on foreign aid in donor countries have received little attention. This paper examines support for foreign aid with a large, multi-level, cross-national study. ...Hypotheses are tested with multi-level models, including both individual-level and country-level variables, to predict positive attitudes. Two dataseis are used to measure attitudes in donor countries: (1) the 1995 World Values Survey, which has information from approximately 6,000 individuals in nine countries and asks a rich battery of questions at the individual level; (2) the 2002 Gallup Voice of the People survey, asks fewer questions of individuals but contains 17 donor countries. Using both surveys combines their distinct strengths and allows tests of individual-and national-level theories across disparate samples. Results generally support the predictions that attitudes toward aid are influenced by religiosity, beliefs about the causes of poverty, awareness of international affairs, and trust in people and institutions. Les déterminants de l'opinion publique dans les pays donateurs à propos de l'aide étrangère ont reçu peu d'attention. Cet article examine le soutien à l'aide étrangère en s'appuyant sur une vaste étude transnationale multi niveau. Les hypothèses sont évaluées avec des modèles multi niveaux incluant des variables tant de niveau individuel que par pays pour pronostiquer les attitudes positives. Deux ensembles de données sont utilisés pour mesurer les attitudes dans les pays donateurs : 1/1'Enquête de valeurs mondiale 1995 offre des informations pour environ 6 000 individus dans neuf pays et présente une riche batterie de questions au niveau individuel; 2/1'enquête Gallup 2002 "la Voix des Gens" pose moins de questions individuelles mais comprend dix-sept pays donateurs. L'utilisation des deux enquêtes combine leurs forces distinctes et permet de tester les théories aux niveaux individuel et national à travers des échantillons contrastés. Les résultats confirment généralement le postulat que les attitudes en faveur de l'aide dépendent de la religiosité, de croyances à propos des causes de pauvreté, d'une connaissance des affaires internationales, de la confiance dans les gens et les institutions. Los factores determinantes de la opinión pública en países donantes sobre la ayuda al exterior es un tema aún poco estudiado. Este artículo explora el apoyo a la ayuda al exterior en un gran estudio comparativo transnacional y multinivel. La prueba de hipótesis se realiza con modelos multinivel que incluyen tanto variables individuales como variables a nivel de país, y que conjeturan actitudes positivas. Para medir las actitudes en países donantes, el estudio utiliza dos bases de datos: (1 ) La Encuesta Mundial de Valores de 1995 contiene información proporcionada por 6,000 individuos aproximadamente, en nueve países diferentes, e incluye una valiosa serie de preguntas a nivel individual, (2) La encuesta Gallup de 2002 "La Voz de la Gente" contiene menos preguntas que la anterior, pero incluye a diecisiete países donantes. El uso combinado de estas dos encuestas, cada una con sus respectivos puntos fuertes, permite la puesta a prueba de teorías individuales y nacionales con muestras dispares. En general, los resultados confirman la predicción según la cual en las actitudes hacia la ayuda exterior influyen la religiosidad, las creencias sobre las causas de la pobreza, el grado de concienciación sobre asuntos internacionales, y la confianza en personas e instituciones.
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