Needs‐Based Targeting or Favoritism? The Regional Allocation of Multilateral Aid within Recipient Countries

Öhler, Hannes; Nunnenkamp, Peter

doi:10.1111/kykl.12061

Cited by 78 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…These interests are unlikely to shape donor behaviour when deciding about the regional distribution of aid projects within a specific country. Rather, the political preferences of recipient governments for specific regions or sectors could come into play at this level (Öhler and Nunnenkamp, ). Donors may try to bypass recipient governments by working with local NGOs, but this would come at the cost of reduced ownership on the part of the local administration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using regional data on aid projects financed by the World Bank and the AfDB, Öhler and Nunnenkamp () analyze the motives governing the aid allocation of the two multilateral donors within up to 27 African recipient countries. They do not find any evidence supporting the donors’ claim that more aid was being given to the neediest regions in terms of higher infant mortality, worse maternal health and more serious malnutrition.…”

Section: Related Literature and Own Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi

Nunnenkamp¹,

Sotirova²,

Thiele³

2016

Development Policy Review

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Acknowledging that aid proliferation and a lack of coordination impair aid effectiveness, donors have repeatedly promised to specialize and better coordinate their aid activities, most notably in the Paris Declaration of 2005. We exploit geocoded aid data from Malawi to assess whether the country's bilateral and multilateral donors have acted accordingly at the district and sector level. We do not find compelling evidence for increased aid specialization after the Paris Declaration, and the regional division of labor among donors may even have deteriorated. Our within-country evidence thus broadly corroborates what previous studies found at the national level of recipient countries. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Literature and Own Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi

Nunnenkamp¹,

Sotirova²,

Thiele³

2016

Development Policy Review

Self Cite

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“…Indeed, 45.9% of scheduled tribes and 26.6% of scheduled castes are in the lowest wealth bracket. 40 Yet SC/ST is not directly synonymous with wealth, and 31 Alesina and Dollar 2000;Eric 2003;Neumayer 2003;Zhang 2004;Winters 2010;Humphrey and Michaelowa 2013;Öhler and Nunnenkamp 2014;Stubbs, Kentikelenis andKing 2015. 32 Martens 2000;Milner 2006;Winters 2010;Eichenauer and Hug 2018.…”

Section: Subnational Allocation Of World Bank Education Aid In India:mentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Wheel Gets the Grease? Constituent Agency and Sub-national World Bank Aid Allocation

2019

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Questions of aid allocation have long focused on discerning the altruistic, self-interested or meritocratic motivation of development donors. Less attention has been paid to the interests and agency of recipient state governments and even less to the interests and agency of constituencies within those states. An implicit assumption is often that the "poor" either passively receive the patronage of their benefactors or they don't. In this paper, we instead suggest that depending on the altruism/egoism of a donor, their sensitivity to needy subnational constituencies in aid allocation also depends on the political empowerment of those groups. In particular, we take advantage of the unique socio-cultural structure in India to examine if the political agency of scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) can explain patterns of district-level allocation of World Bank education aid. Using district-level data on a multi-year World Bank education program, district-level proportions of SC/STs and SC/ST population and of members of parliament, we find that SC/ST districts receive more aid, even when controlling for baseline poverty and educational performance. These results are especially strong when these districts are politically empowered. Our findings suggest that while donors may indeed respond to recipient needs, those recipients who also speak loudly for themselves fare better, highlighting the importance of constituent agency.

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“…With data on the precise locations and timing of specific interventions funded by bilateral and multilateral development finance institutions and subnationally geocoded outcome data, the literature is now uncovering new knowledge about the features of multilateral development finance that are truly distinctive. This approach has produced new insights about how multilateral development finance is geographically targeted within countries (Öhler and Nunnenkamp 2014;Briggs 2017;Nunnenkamp et al 2017) and how these targeting practices differ in consequential ways from the practices of bilateral donors (Dreher et al 2016). This work also identifies important differences in how multilateral donors coordinate their activities as compared to bilateral donors (Nunnenkamp et al 2016a, b).…”

Section: Data Aggregationmentioning

confidence: 99%

International organizations and development finance: Introduction to the special issue

2017

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Every year, states and international organizations (IOs) provide somewhere between $120 and $170 billion in official development finance (ODF) to recipient countries. IOs are typically responsible for about one-third of global ODF, with sovereign governments providing the remainder.1 The fact that IO development finance comes from many countries acting jointly distinguishes it from bilateral development finance. IOs typically aggregate the preferences and resources of multiple member states in the pursuit of a collective policy among their own ranks and toward other countries.This means that development finance from international organizations represents a distinct institutional form of aid-giving and lending that stands apart from bilateral financing. The multilateral nature of IO development finance -requiring member governments to negotiate and agree upon shared policies -may alter the underlying politics and motivations driving multilateral aid as compared to bilateral aid. But is assistance from international organizations actually different in its causes and consequences? Does divergence in institutional form lead to differences in content and function? Are the underlying motivations of IOs truly distinct from their bilateral counterparts? Does IO development finance have different effects on recipients?2 And how are new governance arrangements For existing empirical studies that compare the effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral development finance, see Ram (2003, 2004), Headey (2008, Reddy (2007, 2010), Alvi and Aberra (2012), and Kizhakethalackal et al. (2013). Gulrajani (2016) provides a useful review of the literature on the distinctive features of multilateral development finance and how it has changed over the past decade.

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Needs‐Based Targeting or Favoritism? The Regional Allocation of Multilateral Aid within Recipient Countries

Cited by 78 publications

References 21 publications

Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi

Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi

Which Wheel Gets the Grease? Constituent Agency and Sub-national World Bank Aid Allocation

International organizations and development finance: Introduction to the special issue

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