We analyse the relationship between income volatility and inequality and the conditional role played by aid and remittances. Using a panel of 142 countries for the period 1973 to 2012, we find that income volatility has an adverse impact on inequality, and that the poorest people are the most exposed to these fluctuations. However, while aid and remittances do not seem to have a clear direct impact on inequality, we uncover robust evidence which suggests that aid helps to dampen the negative effects of volatility on the distribution of income, while remittances do not.

After two debt relief initiatives launched in 1996 (the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, HIPC Initiative) and in 1999 (The enhanced HIPC initiative), the G7 decided to go further by cancelling (most of) the remaining multilateral debt for these HIPC countries through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI, 2005). Building on earlier literature that tries to assess the fiscal response effects of HIPC debt relief, we extend this assessment by explicitly including the fiscal response effects of MDRI debt relief, and by using an extended dataset and alternative econometric techniques, in order to have sufficient hindsight and better tackle methodological issues such as country specific effects. We confirm earlier findings that debt relief, and especially the enhanced HIPC initiative, has had a positive impact on recipient country total domestic revenue and public investment (as percentage of GDP). Additionally, thanks to our large observation span, we also observe that the MDRI led to a significant increase in current primary expenditures and domestic revenue ratios, although these effects are on average smaller than the HIPC Initiative ones.

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