[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jecsur/v23y2009i3p433-461.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Aid Effectiveness Literature: The Sad Results Of 40 Years Of Research

Author

Listed:
  • Hristos Doucouliagos
  • Martin Paldam
Abstract
The aid effectiveness literature (AEL) consists of empirical macroeconomic estimates of the effects of development aid. By the end of 2004, it comprised 97 econometric studies of three families of related effects. Each family has been analyzed in a separate meta‐analysis. The AEL is an ideal subject for meta‐analysis as it uses only a few formally similar models to estimate the same underlying effects. It is also an area with strong beliefs, often generated by altruism. When this whole literature is examined, a clear pattern emerges. After 40 years of development aid, the preponderance of the evidence indicates that aid has not been effective. We show that the distribution of results is significantly asymmetric reflecting the reluctance of the research community to publish negative results. The Dutch disease effect on exchange rates provides a plausible explanation for the observed aid ineffectiveness.

Suggested Citation

  • Hristos Doucouliagos & Martin Paldam, 2009. "The Aid Effectiveness Literature: The Sad Results Of 40 Years Of Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 433-461, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jecsur:v:23:y:2009:i:3:p:433-461
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00568.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00568.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00568.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weisskopf, Thomas E, 1972. "An Econometric Test of Alternative Constraints on the Growth of Underdeveloped Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 54(1), pages 67-78, February.
    2. T. D. Stanley & Stephen B. Jarrell, 2005. "Meta‐Regression Analysis: A Quantitative Method of Literature Surveys," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 299-308, July.
    3. Mark McGillivray & Simon Feeny & Niels Hermes & Robert Lensink, 2006. "Controversies over the impact of development aid: it works; it doesn't; it can, but that depends …," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(7), pages 1031-1050.
    4. Hristos Doucouliagos & Martin Paldam, 2005. "Aid Effectiveness on Growth. A Meta Study," Economics Working Papers 2005-13, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    5. Hristos Doucouliagos & Martin Paldam, 2006. "Aid Effectiveness on Accumulation: A Meta Study," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 227-254, May.
    6. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew M. Warner, 1995. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 5398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Daniel B. Klein & Therese DiCola, 2004. "Institutional Ties of _Journal of Development Economics_ Authors and Editors," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 1(2), pages 319-330, August.
    8. Leamer, Edward E, 1983. "Let's Take the Con Out of Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 31-43, March.
    9. J. Svensson, 1999. "Aid, Growth and Democracy," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 275-297, November.
    10. T. D. Stanley, 2008. "Meta‐Regression Methods for Detecting and Estimating Empirical Effects in the Presence of Publication Selection," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(1), pages 103-127, February.
    11. R. Lensink & H. White, 2001. "Are There Negative Returns to Aid?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 42-65.
    12. Makoto Itoh & Costas Lapavitsas, 1999. "Classical Political Economy of Money and Credit," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Political Economy of Money and Finance, chapter 1, pages 4-32, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Griffin, Keith B & Enos, J L, 1970. "Foreign Assistance: Objectives and Consequences," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 313-327, April.
    14. Francesco Busato & Bruno Chiarini & Enrico Marchetti, 2005. "Fiscal Policy under Indeterminacy and Tax Evasion," Economics Working Papers 2005-09, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    15. T. D. Stanley, 2005. "Beyond Publication Bias," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 309-345, July.
    16. Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Economic Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    17. Raghuram G. Rajan & Arvind Subramanian, 2008. "Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 643-665, November.
    18. Elbadawi, Ibrahim A, 1999. "External Aid: Help or Hindrance to Export Orientation in Africa?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 8(4), pages 578-616, December.
    19. Dewald, William G & Thursby, Jerry G & Anderson, Richard G, 1986. "Replication in Empirical Economics: The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Project," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 587-603, September.
    20. Corden, W M, 1984. "Booming Sector and Dutch Disease Economics: Survey and Consolidation," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 36(3), pages 359-380, November.
    21. Haldrup, Niels & Hylleberg, Svend & Pons, Gabriel & Sanso, Andreu, 2007. "Common Periodic Correlation Features and the Interaction of Stocks and Flows in Daily Airport Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 21-32, January.
    22. Griffin, Keith, 1970. "Foreign Capital, Domestic Savings and Economic Development," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 32(2), pages 99-112, May.
    23. Younger, Stephen D., 1992. "Aid and the Dutch disease: Macroeconomic management when everybody loves you," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 20(11), pages 1587-1597, November.
    24. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    25. Paldam, Martin, 1997. "Dutch disease and rent seeking: The Greenland model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 591-614, September.
    26. Hristos Doucouliagos & Martin Paldam, 2007. "A meta-analysis of development aid allocation: The effects of income level and population size," Economics Working Papers 2007-15, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    27. William Easterly, 2003. "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 23-48, Summer.
    28. T. D. Stanley, 2001. "Wheat from Chaff: Meta-analysis as Quantitative Literature Review," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 131-150, Summer.
    29. Weisskopf, Thomas E., 1972. "The impact of foreign capital inflow on domestic savings in underdeveloped countries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 25-38, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ziyoda Asatullaeva & Reza Fathollah Zadeh Aghdam & Nisar Ahmad & Laylo Tashpulatova, 2021. "The impact of foreign aid on economic development: A systematic literature review and content analysis of the top 50 most influential papers," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(4), pages 717-751, May.
    2. Bjerg, Christina & Bjørnskov, Christian & Holm, Anne, 2011. "Growth, debt burdens and alleviating effects of foreign aid in least developed countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 143-153, March.
    3. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2012. "Aid, Growth and Devolution," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1723-1749.
    4. Stephan B. Bruns, 2013. "Identifying Genuine Effects in Observational Research by Means of Meta-Regressions," Jena Economics Research Papers 2013-040, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    5. Tseday Jemaneh Mekasha & Finn Tarp, 2013. "Aid and Growth: What Meta-Analysis Reveals," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(4), pages 564-583, April.
    6. Petra Valickova & Tomas Havranek & Roman Horvath, 2015. "Financial Development And Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 506-526, July.
    7. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Adriana Cardozo, 2013. "Does foreign aid promote recipient exports to donor countries?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 149(3), pages 505-535, September.
    8. Edmore MAHEMBE & Nicholas M. ODHIAMBO, 2017. "On The Link Between Foreign Aid And Poverty Reduction In Developing Countries," Revista Galega de Economía, University of Santiago de Compostela. Faculty of Economics and Business., vol. 26(2), pages 113-128.
    9. Michael Clemens & Steven Radelet & Rikhil Bhavnani, 2004. "Counting Chickens When They Hatch: The Short-term Effect of Aid on Growth," Working Papers 44, Center for Global Development.
    10. Mark McGillivray & Simon Feeny, 2008. "Aid and Growth in Fragile States," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-03, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Juliana Yael Milovich, 2018. "Does Aid Reduce Poverty?," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp122.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    12. Sambit Bhattacharyya & Maurizio Intartaglia & Andy McKay, 2016. "Does Climate Aid Affect Emissions? Evidence from a Global Dataset," CSAE Working Paper Series 2016-09, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    13. Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann & Axel Dreher & Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, 2012. "Does foreign aid really raise per capita income? A time series perspective," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(1), pages 288-313, February.
    14. Keith Blackburn & Gonzalo F. Forgues-Puccio, 2011. "Foreign aid - a fillip for development or a fuel for corruption?," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 158, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    15. Angeles, Luis & Neanidis, Kyriakos C., 2009. "Aid effectiveness: the role of the local elite," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 120-134, September.
    16. Dierk Herzer & Michael Grimm, 2012. "Does foreign aid increase private investment? Evidence from panel cointegration," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(20), pages 2537-2550, July.
    17. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2009. "Aid, growth and decentralization," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 09/09, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    18. Rajan, Raghuram G. & Subramanian, Arvind, 2011. "Aid, Dutch disease, and manufacturing growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 106-118, January.
    19. Stanley, T. D. & Doucouliagos, Chris & Steel, Piers, 2015. "Does ICT generate economic growth? A meta-regression analysis," Working Papers eco_2015_9, Deakin University, Department of Economics.
    20. Ms. Mwanza Nkusu, 2004. "Aid and the Dutch Disease in Low-Income Countries: Informed Diagnoses for Prudent Prognoses," IMF Working Papers 2004/049, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B2 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jecsur:v:23:y:2009:i:3:p:433-461. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0950-0804 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.