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The effectiveness of foreign aid in stimulating economic development is a topic of intense debate in the scientific community and among policy analysts. Numerous empirical studies are devoted to investigating the impact of foreign aid on the economic growth/development of recipient countries. This study reviews the literature relevant to this debate using the bibliometric data of scholarly papers in the Scopus database. Our intention is to identify the trends of publications, their geographical distribution and the most influential journals, authors and articles in this field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour government's new White Paper promises great changes in the British aid programme: re-focusing aid on poverty reduction, partnerships replacing one-sided conditionalities, and policy coherence so that the broad gamut of British policies in areas as diverse as agriculture, trade and investment are in line with the needs of international development. However, the Paper is stronger on broad policy statements than detail as to how to implement these strategies. Moreover, an examination of the history of British aid shows continuity to have been greater than change. Both Labour and Conservative governments have presided over cuts in UK aid, and so instead pointed to the high quality of British aid. But efforts to improve aid quality have been impeded by the use of aid to achieve political and commercial objectives. Whether the White Paper represents a break with the past cannot be determined by the Paper's brave rhetoric, but only by the future actions of the Department for International Development. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the perspective of the Independent Group on British Aid (IGBA) 1997 White Paper on International Development. Measures for which the IGBA has been campaigning since the publication of "Real Aid: A Strategy for Britain," in 1982; Significance of the White Paper; Advice from the group regarding the White Paper on International Development.

There is a widespread perception among academic researchers and aid practitioners alike that empirical cross-country analysis fails to find any significant link between aid flows and growth, and that aid is successful only when associated with good policies in the recipient countries. These positions do not stand up to careful scrutiny of existing studies. In this paper, we offer a re-examination of the literature on the aid–savings, aid–investment, and aid–growth relationships, and a comparative appraisal of more recent research contributions. Using an analytic framework for evaluating the empirical work, a coherent and positive picture of the aid–growth link emerges. There is a robust aid–growth link even in countries hampered by an unfavourable policy environment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent economic relations including foreign assistance scenario in Africa show expansion of China and India as emerging bilateral partners, competing with traditional countries in Europe and North America. The results of this paper found that the relationship of China and India with Zimbabwe has resulted in several challenges including increasing resource‐backed debt burden, exploitation of the natural resources, and flouting of constitutional, environmental, and labor provisions. The paper recommends that the Zimbabwean government must demand loans and investments that are contracted under clear terms and conditions, with parliamentary oversight and public scrutiny to avoid abuse by the elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to estimate China's net foreign aid from 2001 to 2013 as compared with net official development assistance (ODA) figures, which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) customarily uses. First, a practical definition to capture China's foreign aid activities as a proxy for China's ODA was proposed. Second, both net and gross disbursements of China's foreign aid were estimated. Third, the results were compared with DAC members' ODA; China's donor ranking has moved up from 16th in 2001 to 6th in 2012 and 2013. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international donor community has grave concerns about the effectiveness of aid to countries it classifies as ‘fragile states’. The impact of aid on growth and poverty reduction and the ability to efficiently absorb additional inflows is thought to be significantly lower in these countries compared to other recipients. This paper examines this issue and suggests that a while a number of fragile states can efficiently absorb more aid than they have received, a number receive far more aid than they can efficiently absorb from a perspective based purely on per capita income growth. Policy recommendations are provided. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent UK White Paper makes an admirable commitment to the idea of ‘partnership’, as the keystone of a new aid relationship with countries committed to poverty reduction and good governance. The concept is a difficult one, however, open to multiple interpretation. Genuine participation means joint ownership, with mutual rights and obligations; and it implies a contractual relationship, with procedures for redress in case of default. Other donors, notably the EU, have travelled this road with mixed success and much back-sliding. Can DFID learn from their experience? Can it devise its own institutional innovations to build true partnership? © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the efficiency of public sector expenditures and foreign aid at achieving social sector outcomes in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Efficiency is estimated using a Stochastic Production Function (SPF) approach and panel data since 1990. A second stage of the analysis examines the determinants of efficiency. Results indicate that the efficiency of aid and public sectors at improving life expectancy has deteriorated during the 1990s but efficiency at improving school enrolments has increased. Higher levels of governance are associated with higher efficiency. There is also evidence to suggest that efficiency is lower in SIDS, as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing aid relationship between the European Union (EU) and Africa since the early 2000s, emphasising the existence of a paradox: on the one hand, the EU has been preoccupied with improving the quality of its aid; on the other hand, it has failed to fully take into account the voice of the recipients in the design of the Country Strategy Papers (CSPs). The failure to promote local ownership is due to the excessive preoccupation of the European Commission with showing that it is able to commit and spend money quickly and to the new emphasis on ensuring increased coordination and complementarity with the Member States, which results in a reduced space for negotiations with recipient countries. More controversial are the conclusions on the EU's contribution to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper returns to the question of what is the correct structural form for the relationship between aid, other financial flows, and economic growth rates, using a cross-section approach and -- for the first time -- data for the entire 1980s as well as the 1960s and 1970s. For the 1980s the aggregate partial regression coefficient of aid on growth emerges, for the first time, as positive and Gust) significant, although this result does not survive the partitioning of the sample into sub-groups. It remains obvious that the effect of aid on growth is country-specific, and in the later part of the paper we test a new approach under which aid effectiveness passes through a cycle, first increasing and then diminishing as a country's stage of economic development alters. If this approach is accepted (and the initial results, with an informal test, are promising) the overall cross-section relationship between aid and growth, abstracting from other influences, will be neutral in most periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the East-Central European countries were provided significant external capacity building assistance to help their emergence as donors of foreign aid. This paper aims to map these capacity development programmes and identify where they have helped and what challenges remain for the new donors. The main conclusion is that although capacity building has been instrumental in building organisational structures, working procedures and training staff, deeper underlying problems such as low levels of financing, lacking political will, the need for visibility and low staff numbers continue to hinder the new international development policies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), held in Busan, South Korea drew the largest number as well as the most diverse group of participants ever. This paper examines the shift towards a new global development cooperation paradigm at the Busan HLF-4; the new global partnership that emerged from Busan; and what South Korea brought to the global discourse on development cooperation as an emerging donor. Although it is premature to argue that a new paradigm was established at Busan, there was a clear political momentum for a shift from aid effectiveness to development effectiveness, a change that was advocated and promoted particularly by new actors such as South Korea. The Busan HLF-4 and the post-Busan process have highlighted the global role of new actors, with South Korea exemplifying through its own experience how aid can help bring about development, contributing to the global discourse on development cooperation and playing a bridging role between traditional and emerging donors. The changing dynamics of the world including the global financial crisis and climate change suggest that the global challenges are different from what had been expected when the HLF process and Millennium Development Goals were begun in the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, we recommend that global development cooperation discourse and activities that had been led by traditional Western donors need to find more effective ways of incorporating new actors and different modalities of development cooperation because the global challenges we face are grave. New development partners can bring to the table lessons, energies and capacities deriving from their own dramatic success in alleviating poverty and attaining development and their visibility as global development actors. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between indicators of governance and per capita foreign aid in a cross-section of seven PICs. Controlling for poor economic growth, foreign exchange shortage and small size, a fixed-effects model correcting for AR (1) errors is tested for the period 1996–2004 that incorporates five measures of governance. The findings here confirm that voice and accountability, rule of law and corruption are negatively correlated with per capita foreign aid. However, regulatory quality and government effectiveness are positively associated with per capita foreign aid. Some policy implications are drawn. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous aid effectiveness research often claims that foreign aid has been unsuccessful in increasing growth rates. This result could be due either to methodological weaknesses, or to genuine aid efficiency losses. Empirically, the author finds that once the best available techniques are employed, aid has a significant but moderate average effect on growth over the period 1970–2001. A promising explanation of why the estimated returns to aid are not larger is that bilateral aid had no significant effect on growth during the Cold War (pre-1990), but had a significant and sizeable effect thereafter. In contrast, multilateral aid seems to have had sizeable and significant effects throughout. These results imply that the negative conclusions drawn by earlier research should be interpreted in their proper historical context, rather than as a necessary condemnation of current aid effectiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If development assistance targeted at specific sectors is not used as intended, aid is said to be fungible. While fungible aid is in general perceived as being less effective than aid used as specified, this has not been formally tested. This paper attempts at filling this gap and hence, tries to assess to what extent fungibility is something donors should be concerned about. Country-specific estimates of fungibility are obtained for 57 aid-recipient countries, suggesting that sectoral aid is indeed fungible on average. These estimates are then incorporated into an empirical model of aid and economic growth. I do not find any evidence of non-fungible sectoral aid working better than fungible aid. Then, I focus on sectoral aid to ‘pro-poor’ government expenditure sectors to assess the effect on infant mortality. While the results indicate that non-fungible aid is welfare improving, this is not robust to small changes in the specification. My results suggest that the concept of fungibility may be too narrow and should possibly not be the most central concern when aid is debated or given. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a contribution to the literature on aid and growth. Despite an extensive empirical literature in this area, existing studies have not addressed directly the mechanisms via which aid should affect growth. We identify investment as the most significant transmission mechanism, and also consider effects through financing imports and government consumption spending. With the use of residual generated regressors, we achieve a measure of the total effect of aid on growth, accounting for the effect via investment. Pooled panel results for a sample of 25 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1970 to 1997 point to a significant positive effect of foreign aid on growth, ceteris paribus. On average, each one percentage point increase in the aid/GNP ratio contributes one-quarter of one percentage point to the growth rate. Africa's poor growth record should not therefore be attributed to aid ineffectiveness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have found evidence to suggest that aid's effectiveness on growth has improved. Yet the debate on aid and domestic savings is still inconclusive and aid fungibility continues to be particularly contentious. One of the problems with much of the earlier literature examining the relationship between aid and savings (or aid-consumption) is that the relationship is not well embedded in a convincing theoretical framework. Although recent developments in fiscal response models have been made, the methodology applied when testing the model empirically is still not convincing. In this paper we use an alternative theoretical setting and start from a ‘normal income’ perspective that consumption and savings are driven by life cycle/permanent income factors. Using a panel setting, the model is tested on a sample of developing countries. We found limited support for life cycle/permanent income drivers but did find that changes in the policy environment, for instance stabilisation programmes, may have been influential. The hypothesis that aid has been fungible in the pre-1980 era could not be rejected. However, for the post 1980 period, where policy reforms were common, aid inflows did not seem to have leaked to finance consumption contrary to the views of both the right and the left questioning the utility of foreign aid. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses recent issues and possible future directions of Japan's official development assistance (ODA). While Japan remains one of the world's largest donor nations, given its prolonged economic stagnation and mounting public sector debt, the Japanese government is under increasing public pressure to reduce ODA budgets and to use ODA in more explicit pursuit of Japan's own economic and political interests. Internationally, Japan continues to attract criticism for its emphasis on infrastructure-related projects and for its restrained willingness to participate in multilateral partnerships. This paper argues that Japan can meet these domestic and international challenges by developing a coherent national strategy for ODA, broadly designed to enhance effectiveness, accountability and transparency. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the hypothesis that aid effectiveness can be linked to ‘good policies’ and thus that aid, if it is to have maximum impact, should be directed at countries following good policies. This is an idea which we have considerable sympathy with in principle and have built upon in the past. Indeed at one level it is almost a truism and yet in practice we find little empirical evidence in support of it when we restrict good policies to mean free market policies. ‘Good policies’ appear to matter in stimulating growth, but they do not appear to impact on aid effectiveness. Unlike much of other recent work the analysis is of a simultaneous system of equations of which growth is just one. The results suggest a complex interaction between macroeconomic variables and good policies, but it also suggests the need to widen our definition of good policies to increase both the theoretical and empirical relevance of the hypothesis. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years concern over environmental issues have moved high up the political agenda. This has accelerated particularly in the run up to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Two sets of concerns have dominated attention: the problem of degrading environments within developing countries and global issues such as climate change and ozone depletion. The prime focus of attention in the developing countries has traditionally been on the former. Concerns over the latter originated primarily in the industrialised world but the issue is now recognised to have important implications also for the developing countries. New aid mechanisms are being formed to assist these countries address global environmental issues. This paper discusses economic approaches to assessing environmental impacts and attempts to examine the trade-offs which developing countries face in addressing national as compared international environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of foreign aid on poverty. The impact of aid on poverty is assessed using dynamic panel estimation techniques, which enable us to control for time-invariant country-specific effects and endogeneity of aid. The results suggest that aid has a significant poverty-reducing effect even after controlling for average income. Specifically, foreign aid is associated with a decline in poverty as measured by the poverty rate, poverty gap index and squared poverty gap index. We also find that the composition of aid matters-multilateral aid and grants do better in reducing poverty than bilateral aid and loans. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD has set target rates of poverty incidence and levels of a number of human development indicators as goals to be met with the aid of development assistance by the years 2005 and 2015. In this paper we assess the likelihood that these goals will be met. We estimate future levels of poverty and human development indicators, using econometric models that capture the past relationship between per capita economic growth and both poverty and human development indicators. Our models use existing projections of future economic growth for the world's major developing regions. We find that for some developing regions achievement of the DAC poverty targets depends critically on the pattern as well as the rate of growth, as targets are only met when high or medium levels of income equality accompany growth. The prospects for achieving the human development targets, particularly gender equity ones, are good for most regions. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the academic literature on the macroeconomic impact of development aid, with a special emphasis on the question as to whether, as claimed by much of the empirical literature, aid does not increase growth. The inadequate theoretical foundation of models of aid's impact on savings, in particular their failure to consider economy-wide effects, make them a poor basis for conclusions about aid's impact. The combination of weak theory with poor econometric methodology makes it difficult to conclude anything about the relationship between aid and savings. The literature on the relationship between aid and growth suffers from similar problems. Country-level studies of aid's impact on a range of macroeconomic variables are required which may build on the relatively small existing literature in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between foreign aid and growth in per capita GDP using annual data from the 1960 to 1997 period for a sample of 71 aid-receiving developing economies. The results show that the effect of foreign aid on economic growth is positive, permanent, statistically significant, and sizable: raising foreign aid by $20 per person of the receiving country results in a permanent increase in the growth rate of real GDP per capita by approximately 0.16 per cent. Using an alternative foreign-aid measure, a permanent increase in aid by 1 per cent of the receiving economy's GDP permanently raises the per capita growth rate by 0.14 to 0.26 per cent. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As untying aid was widely considered key to enhancing aid effectiveness, the South Korean government decided to increase the share of untied aid. While the share increased substantially in recent years, considerable variation exists in the proportion of untied aid provided to different recipient countries. This article explores the reasons why. We identify three key variables: international factors, economic interests and recipient country governance. By analysing South Korea's aid data for the period 2010-2013, we find that Korea's aid-untying practice is affected by international norms and the recipient country's governance, but not by peer pressure and economic interests. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resorts to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 31 African countries covering the period 1980 to 2009, we test whether donor aid facilitates such political business cycles and investigate their effect on growth. We find evidence that donors, through guaranteeing support to incumbent governments, may unwittingly instigate political business cycles. With forbearance, and sometimes complicity by donors, aid seems to allow incumbent governments to instigate macroeconomic stimuli that ensure electoral victory with no fear of losing aid support. © 2015 UNU-WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note adds to the research which questions the recent influential view that recipient country's ‘policies’ play an important role in the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in developing countries. In the first step, the almost universal practice of imposing the constraint of equality on parameters of bilateral and multilateral aid is relaxed and it is shown that ‘policy’ has no role in the effect of aid even in those cases where the usual constrained models do show such an effect. In addition, many cases are noted where there is no indication of recipient country's policies having any role in the effect of aid on growth even in the usual constrained specifications. These cases employ not merely the Burnside–Dollar ‘policy’ index, which almost all scholars have used, but also two other broader measures. It is thus concluded that there is little empirical evidence to support the widely-disseminated view that redirecting aid toward countries with ‘good’ policies leads to more growth and greater poverty reduction in developing countries. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces topics and articles discussed in March 1992 issue of the "Journal of International Development," including an article on the macro-economic effectiveness of aid.

Assesses the effect of external economic policies of Japan on economic development of developing countries. Levels of international development promotion; Trade policy of Japan; Initiatives in restructuring business operations in Japan; Salient characteristics of Japanese Official Development Assistance.

Aid donors devote substantial sums to economic and social research. This is justified by its contribution to development. Aid agencies should act as agents for the intended beneficiaries of research, principally LDC policy-makers. The research agenda should reflect the perspectives of both researchers and beneficiaries. Due to market failure, donors need to support research capacity. They can do this through their funding policy towards individual research projects, support for broader programmes of research, or by lump-sum financing of research institutions. The location of research affects its contribution to development: there may be a trade-off between quality of research and other objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a speech by Ann Clwyd, Member of Parliament for Cynon Valley and Shadow Minister for Overseas Development, delivered at the Development Studies Association Conference at the University of Wales in Swansea on September 13, 1991. Contributions of the Labour Party to development and poverty alleviation; Decision of the government to abandon the Labour Party's commitment to focus aid on the poorest; Budget of the government for overseas aid.

This essay discusses the politics of programming development assistance. The first section presents a macro-view of the development 'system' as a background to the first case study, the country programming exercise in Colombia. The second very different case is of the attempt to reorganize the debt of Guinea-Bissau through a structural adjustment programme. The case studies reveal the two programming experiences to be political rather than simply technical exercises. They show the effort to find a disinterested coordinator to be futile. The conclusion argues that coordination should be the major responsibility of host country nationals who draw their primary inspiration from the so-called beneficiaries of development assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]