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Etudes & documents; Since 2000, Official Development Assistance has played a crucial role in efforts related to the achievement of MDGs. This is especially the case in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) which is the world’s largest recipient of foreign aid. This paper assesses the effectiveness of aid and its efficient use in achieving universal primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of aid is assessed for a sample of 35 SSA countries over the decade 2000-2010. The results suggest that higher aid to education significantly increases primary completion rate. This result is robust to the use of various methods of estimation, the inclusion of instrument to account for the endogeneity of aid and the set of control variables included in regressions. In addition, this paper shows that there is strong heterogeneity in the efficient use of aid across countries in SSA.

When one’s treatment status affects the outcomes of others, experimental data are not sufficient to identify a treatment causal impact. In order to account for peer effects in program response, we use a social network model. We estimate and validate the model on experimental data collected for the evaluation of a scholarship program in Colombia. By design, randomization is at the student-level. Friendship data reveals that treated and untreated students interact together. Besides providing evidence of peer effects in schooling, we find that ignoring peer effects would have led us to overstate the program actual impact.

Using comprehensive administrative data on France's single largest financial aid program, this paper provides new evidence on the impact of large-scale need-based grant programs on the college enrollment decisions, persistence, and graduation rates of low-income students. We exploit sharp discontinuities in the grant eligibility formula to identify the impact of aid on student outcomes at different levels of study. We find that the provision of 1,500 euros cash allowances to prospective undergraduate or graduate students increases their college enrollment rates by 5 to 7 percent. Moreover, we show that need-based grants have positive effects on student persistence and degree completion. (JEL H52, I22, I24, I28, J24)

Resume Nous mesurons l’impact redistributif des depenses educatives et de leur financement. Nous adoptons une perspective de cycle de vie qui consiste a estimer pour chaque individu les depenses publiques d’education dont il a beneficie, et l’imposition necessaire pour les financer. Nous concluons que les depenses d’education et leur financement public, au-dela de l’âge de l’enseignement obligatoire, aggravent legerement les inegalites entre menages classes selon l’origine sociale ; en revanche, nos resultats s’inversent quand les individus sont classes selon leur revenu futur estime. Ces transferts sont un enjeu d’equite marginal par rapport a celui lie aux differences de parcours scolaires et professionnels en fonction du milieu social.