a b s t r a c tThis paper explores how U.S. bilateral economic aid has changed over time, focusing on how the recent erain which the War on Terror has played a prominent role in the Bush administration's aid policy-differs from previous eras. In particular, has the renewed geopolitical role of aid coincided with a reduction of aid to the poorest countries or less weight on need in U.S. aid allocation decisions? We start with an analysis of annual U.S. aid budgets from 1955 to 2006. Controlling for domestic political and economic conditions, we find that the War on Terror's effect on the aid budget is significantly larger than is immediately apparent. To explore how the emphasis on need may have changed over time, we use country-level panel data on aid allocations to 119 countries across the same time period. This shows that U.S. aid flows-for the poorest as well as other developing countries-increased with the War on Terror. However, after rising for 35 years, the emphasis placed on need has been falling steadily for core aid recipients during the War on Terror.

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Asian Development Bank, Japan, United States, Aid allocation,

This paper examines the role of US domestic politics in aid allocation using panel data on 119 countries from 1960 to 1997. Employing proxies for four allocation criteria (development concerns, strategic importance, commercial importance, and democratization), we find evidence that each has influence, although the evidence is stronger for some criteria (development, commercial) than for others (strategic, democratization). Their influence depends on the composition of the US government. When the president and Congress are liberal, development concerns receive more weight than when the president and/or Congress are more conservative. When the Congress is more conservative, commercial concerns have more weight than when the Congress is liberal. These findings are important in light of current attempts to overhaul the allocation of aid. Copyright � 2006 The Authors; Journal compilation � 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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