[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20140012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Causal Links between Aid and Government Expenditures

Author

Listed:
  • Lukasz Marc

    (VU University Amsterdam)

Abstract
The most recent literature on aid effectiveness finds a positive effect of aid on growth. To the extent that aid goes through the budget, this either reflects an aid-financed increase in government expenditures (quantity effect) or an improvement in the use of government resources as a result of donor involvement and lower taxes (quality effect). This study investigates the causal link between on-budget aid and government expenditures using a large cross-country panel data set for 53 countries and recent methodology to test Granger causality in heterogeneous panels. I find that in most countries donors do not change aid in response to changes in the level of government expenditures and that recipient governments react to aid by changing the way they use their own resources rather than by increasing spending. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is little support for a quantity effect: aid Granger causes government expenditures in only eight countries. This suggests that aid substitutes for domestic government revenue and that aid is effective largely through the quality effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Lukasz Marc, 2014. "The Causal Links between Aid and Government Expenditures," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-012/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/14012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eskander Alvi & Aberra Senbeta, 2012. "Does Foreign Aid Reduce Poverty?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 955-976, November.
    2. Thornton, Daniel L & Batten, Dallas S, 1985. "Lag-Length Selection and Tests of Granger Causality between Money and Income," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 17(2), pages 164-178, May.
    3. Finn Tarp, 2006. "Aid and Development," Discussion Papers 06-12, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    4. Dumitrescu, Elena-Ivona & Hurlin, Christophe, 2012. "Testing for Granger non-causality in heterogeneous panels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1450-1460.
    5. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2006. "Aid and Development: The Mozambican Case," Discussion Papers 06-13, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    6. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2009. "Aid and Growth: Have We Come Full Circle?," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2009-05, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Odaki, Mitsuhiro, 1986. "Tests of Granger causality by the selection of the orders of a bivariate autoregressive model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 22(2-3), pages 223-227.
    8. Gebhard Kirchgässner & Jürgen Wolters & Uwe Hassler, 2013. "Introduction to Modern Time Series Analysis," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, edition 2, number 978-3-642-33436-8, June.
    9. David Roodman, 2007. "The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development, and Cross-Country Empirics," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 255-277, May.
    10. Arndt Channing & Jones Sam & Tarp Finn, 2010. "Aid, Growth, and Development: Have We Come Full Circle?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-29, December.
    11. Erkan Erdil & I. Hakan Yetkiner, 2009. "The Granger-causality between health care expenditure and output: a panel data approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 511-518.
    12. Oliver Morrissey, 2012. "Aid and Government Fiscal Behaviour: What Does the Evidence Say?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-001, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2011. "Aid Effectiveness: Opening the Black Box," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-044, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Katarina Juselius & Niels Framroze Møller & Finn Tarp, 2014. "The Long-Run Impact of Foreign Aid in 36 African Countries: Insights from Multivariate Time Series Analysis," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(2), pages 153-184, April.
    15. Granger, C. W. J., 1980. "Testing for causality : A personal viewpoint," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 329-352, May.
    16. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-438, July.
    17. B. Mak Arvin & Francisco Barillas, 2002. "Foreign aid, poverty reduction, and democracy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(17), pages 2151-2156.
    18. Robert Osei & Oliver Morrissey & Tim Lloyd, 2005. "The fiscal effects of aid in Ghana," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(8), pages 1037-1053.
    19. Judson, Ruth A. & Owen, Ann L., 1999. "Estimating dynamic panel data models: a guide for macroeconomists," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 9-15, October.
    20. 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.
    21. Jan Pettersson, 2007. "Foreign sectoral aid fungibility, growth and poverty reduction," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 1074-1098.
    22. Morrissey, Oliver, 2012. "Aid and Government Fiscal Behaviour: What Does the Evidence Say?," WIDER Working Paper Series 001, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    23. David Roodman, 2006. "How to Do xtabond2," North American Stata Users' Group Meetings 2006 8, Stata Users Group.
    24. ., 2006. "HIV/AIDS and Development," Chapters, in: David Alexander Clark (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Development Studies, chapter 48, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    25. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    26. Hood, M. V. & Kidd, Quentin & Morris, Irwin L., 2008. "Two Sides of the Same Coin? Employing Granger Causality Tests in a Time Series Cross-Section Framework," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(3), pages 324-344, July.
    27. Mark McGillivray & Oliver Morrissey, 2001. "Fiscal Effects of Aid," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2001-61, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    28. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    29. Arndt Channing & Jones Sam & Tarp Finn, 2010. "Aid, Growth, and Development: Have We Come Full Circle?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-29, December.
    30. repec:dau:papers:123456789/6159 is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Mark McGillivray & Oliver Morrissey, 2000. "Aid fungibility in Assessing Aid: red herring or true concern?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(3), pages 413-428, April.
    32. Urbain, J. P., 1989. "Model selection criteria and granger causality tests : An empirical note," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 317-320.
    33. David Roodman, 2008. "Through the Looking-Glass, and What OLS Found There: On Growth, Foreign Aid, and Reverse Causality," Working Papers 137, Center for Global Development.
    34. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2011. "Aid Effectiveness: Opening the Black Box," WIDER Working Paper Series 044, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    35. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Łukasz Marć, 2015. "The impact of aid on total government expenditures: New evidence on fungibility," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-010, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Łukasz Marć, 2017. "The Impact of Aid on Total Government Expenditures: New Evidence on Fungibility," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 627-663, August.
    3. Lukasz Marc, 2012. "New Evidence on Fungibility at the Aggregate Level," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-083/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Patrick Guillaumont & Laurent Wagner, 2014. "Aid Effectiveness for Poverty Reduction: Lessons from Cross‑country Analyses, with a Special Focus on Vulnerable Countries," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(HS01), pages 217-261.
    5. Wako, Hassen, 2016. "Aid, institutions and economic growth: Heterogeneous parameters and heterogeneous donors," MERIT Working Papers 2016-009, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    6. Juergen Bitzer & Erkan Goeren, 2018. "Foreign Aid and Subnational Development: A Grid Cell Analysis," Working Papers V-407-18, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2018.
    7. Thomas Bwire & Oliver Morrissey & Tim Lloyd, 2013. "Foreign Aid, Public Sector and Private Consumption: a Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Approach," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-094, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. 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.
    9. Töngür, Ünal & Elveren, Adem Yavuz, 2014. "Deunionization and pay inequality in OECD Countries: A panel Granger causality approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 417-425.
    10. Katarina Juselius & Niels Framroze Møller & Finn Tarp, 2014. "The Long-Run Impact of Foreign Aid in 36 African Countries: Insights from Multivariate Time Series Analysis," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(2), pages 153-184, April.
    11. González, Mariano & Larrú, José María, 2012. "Egalitarian aid. The impact of aid on Latin American inequality," MPRA Paper 41660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-25 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Lof, Matthijs & Mekasha, Tseday Jemaneh & Tarp, Finn, 2015. "Aid and Income: Another Time-series Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 19-30.
    14. Sebastian Galiani & Stephen Knack & Lixin Colin Xu & Ben Zou, 2017. "The effect of aid on growth: evidence from a Quasi-experiment," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 1-33, March.
    15. Lof, Matthijs & Mekasha, Tseday Jemaneh & Tarp, Finn, 2015. "Aid and Income: Another Time-series Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 19-30.
    16. Arndt, Channing & Jones, Sam & Tarp, Finn, 2015. "Assessing Foreign Aid’s Long-Run Contribution to Growth and Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 6-18.
    17. Tony Addison & Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, 2013. "Aid and Dutch Disease: Evidence from Moroccan and Tunisian Time-Series Data," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-132, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Gravier-Rymaszewska, Joanna, 2012. "How Aid Supply Responds to Economic Crises: A Panel VAR Approach," WIDER Working Paper Series 025, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Bwire, Thomas & Lloyd, Tim & Morrissey, Oliver, 2013. "Foreign Aid, Public Sector and Private Consumption: A Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Approach," WIDER Working Paper Series 094, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Yongfu Huang & Muhammad G. Quibria, 2015. "The global partnership for sustainable development," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 0(3-4), pages 157-174, August.
    21. Carter, Patrick, 2017. "Aid econometrics: Lessons from a stochastic growth model," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 216-232.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    foreign aid; government expenditures; Granger causality; fungibility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • O23 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:tin:wpaper:20140012. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    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.