Aid Allocation through Various Official and Private Channels: Need, Merit and Self-Interest as Motives of German Donors

Previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country. We estimate Tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need, recipient merit and self-interest of donors for various channels of official and private German aid across a large sample of recipient countries in 2005-2007. Our findings strongly underscore the need for a disaggregated analysis of aid allocation. Aid channels differ significantly in the extent to which need and merit are taken into account. Yet, the German case does not reveal unambiguously superior aid channels. Better targeted aid through some channels seems to be conditioned on political support by recipient countries in the UN General Assembly. --aid allocation,aid channels,donor motives,Germany,Tobit models

Do Aid Donors Coordinate Within Recipient Countries?

Aid fragmentation and a lack of donor coordination have been widely recognized as principal problems impairing the effectiveness of aid. In particular, the importance of within-country division of labor has been highlighted in recent years. At the same time, rigorous quantitative analyses of within-country aid coordination are largely missing. Taking the whole donor pool(including NGOs) within an aid recipient country into account, we examine the coordination behavior of donors across regions and sectors. Our results indicate a modest degree of donor coordination within Cambodia, even after the 2005 Paris Declaration. In particular, the coordination efforts among bilateral donors seem rather limited, suggesting that their political and economic interests prevent closer coordination. With respect to the behavior of NGOs, we find them to be mainly active in the same regions and sectors as official donors, creating coordination problems between the two groups of donors. In addition, NGOs appear to cluster in the regional-sectoral space although there seems to be some sort of coordination among them

Does Conditionality Work? A Test for an Innovative US Aid Scheme

Performance-based aid has been proposed as an alternative to the failed traditional approach whereby donors make aid conditional on the reform promises of recipient countries. However, hardly any empirical evidence exists on whether ex post rewards are effective in inducing reforms. We attempt to fill this gap by investigating whether the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was successful in promoting better control of corruption. We employ a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach, considering different ways of defining the treatment group as well as different time periods during which incentive effects could have materialized. We find evidence of strong anticipation effects immediately after the announcement of the MCC, while increasing uncertainty about the timing and amount of MCC aid appear to weaken the incentive to fight corruption over time.foreign aid, corruption, Millennium Challenge Corporation, MCC effect

Funding, Competition and the Efficiency of NGOs: An Empirical Analysis of Non-charitable Expenditure of US NGOs Engaged in Foreign Aid

We assess the determinants of the wide variation in the efficiency of foreign aid activities across US-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In particular, we analyze whether non-charitable expenditures for administration, management and fundraising depend on the intensity of competition among NGOs and on the degree to which they are refinanced by governments. We control for NGO heterogeneity in various dimensions as well as major characteristics of recipient countries. We find that fiercer competition is associated with more efficient foreign aid activities of NGOs, rather than leading to excessive fundraising. Official funding tends to increase administrative costs. Nevertheless, officially financed NGOs spend relatively more on charitable activities since they are less concerned with collecting private donations through fundraising efforts. --non-governmental organizations,foreign aid,administrative costs,fundraising,United States

Aid Allocation through Various Official and Private Channels: Need, Merit and Self-Interest as Motives of German Donors

Previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country. We estimate Tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need, recipient merit and self-interest of donors for various channels of official and private German aid across a large sample of recipient countries in 2005-2007. Our findings strongly underscore the need for a disaggregated analysis of aid allocation. Aid channels differ significantly in the extent to which need and merit are taken into account. Yet, the German case does not reveal unambiguously superior aid channels. Better targeted aid through some channels seems to be conditioned on political support by recipient countries in the UN General Assembly

Acting Autonomously or Mimicking the State and Peers? A Panel Tobit Analysis of Financial Dependence and Aid Allocation by Swiss NGOs

NGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for Swiss NGOs. The analysis offers new insights in two major regards: First, we cover the allocation of both self-financed and officially co-financed aid for a large panel of NGOs and recipient countries. Second, by classifying each NGO according to its financing structure, we address the unresolved question of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of NGO aid. It turns out that NGOs mimic the state as well as NGO peers. Officially refinanced NGOs are more inclined to imitate the allocation of ODA. However, the degree of financial dependence does not affect the poverty orientation of NGO aid and the incentives of NGOs to engage in easier environments. The allocation of self-financed aid differs in several respects from the allocation of officially co-financed aid, including the role of financial dependence for imitating the state and herding among NGOs.NGO aid; aid allocation; official co-financing; financial dependence

Throwing foreign aid at HIV/AIDS in developing countries: Missing the target?

We assess empirically whether foreign official development assistance (ODA) has been effective in alleviating HIV/AIDS epidemics, which figures prominently among the Millennium Development Goals. We employ a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach to identify the treatment effect of ODA specifically meant to fight sexually transmitted diseases on HIV/AIDS-related outcome variables. We do not find that ODA has prevented new infections to an extent that would have reduced the number of people living with HIV. By contrast, ODA has contributed effectively to the medical care of infected people. However, conclusive evidence on significant treatment effects on AIDS-related deaths only exists for the major bilateral source of ODA, the United States. In particular, targeted US assistance programs appear to be more effective than the activities of multilateral organizations

US based NGOs in international development cooperation: Survival of the fittest?

The non-distribution constraint of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) would be harder, and financiers as well as recipients could expect more charitable output from them, if less efficient NGOs were squeezed out of international development cooperation. We employ Probit and complementary log-log estimations to analyze which factors determine the probability of 'market' exit for almost 900 US based NGOs with overseas aid activities during the 1984-2003 period. Apart from their size and experience, we consider administrative overheads as an important aspect of NGO efficiency. We also account for other dimensions of NGO heterogeneity, including the importance of official refinancing. We find that larger administrative overheads increase the probability of exit for secular NGOs, though not for religious NGOs. Furthermore, we detect complex non-linear effects once the interactions between administrative overheads and official refinancing are taken into account

Donor coordination and specialization: Did the Paris declaration make a difference?

We assess whether bilateral and multilateral donors of foreign aid specialized and coordinated their activities with other donors as agreed in the Paris Declaration of 2005. We account for donor heterogeneity, varying aid priorities and recipient characteristics in order to isolate changes in donor behaviour over time. Recent shifts in aid priorities, such as the rising importance of general budget support, have reduced the fragmentation of aid. Nevertheless, our results reveal that aid fragmentation persisted after the Paris Declaration and coordination among donors has even weakened

Aid Allocation through Various Official and Private Channels: Need, Merit and Self-Interest as Motives of German Donors

Previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country. We estimate Tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need, recipient merit and self-interest of donors for various channels of official and private German aid across a large sample of recipient countries in 2005-2007. Our findings strongly underscore the need for a disaggregated analysis of aid allocation. Aid channels differ significantly in the extent to which need and merit are taken into account. Yet, the German case does not reveal unambiguously superior aid channels. Better targeted aid through some channels seems to be conditioned on political support by recipient countries in the UN General Assembly