IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jed/journl/v39y2014i4p99-115.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Foreign Aid And Development: Looking Beyond The Growth Effect

Author

Listed:
  • MOHAMMADOU NOUROU

    (The University of Ngaoundere, Cameroon)

Abstract

On the question of whether aid stimulates GDP growth, the profession provides inconclusive and often contradictory findings. While waiting for a stronger consensus, this paper analyzes the direct effect of aid on other non-monetary dimensions of development. I construct an index of social and human development similar to the UNDP¡¯s human development index but which differs from it by excluding per capita GDP. Using both non-parametric and parametric methods, I find a negative relationship between aid and social development. After controlling for per capita income, the econometric analysis suggests that higher dependence on foreign aid worsens social and human development.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammadou Nourou, 2014. "Foreign Aid And Development: Looking Beyond The Growth Effect," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 39(4), pages 99-115, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:jed:journl:v:39:y:2014:i:4:p:99-115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jed.or.kr/full-text/39-4/5.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Paul Azam & Véronique Thelen, 2008. "The roles of foreign aid and education in the war on terror," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 375-397, June.
    2. Tony Addison & George Mavrotas & Mark McGillivray, 2005. "Aid, Debt Relief and New Sources of Finance for Meeting the Millennium Development Goals," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-09, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Russell Davidson & James G. Mackinnon, 1982. "Some Non-Nested Hypothesis Tests and the Relations Among Them," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(4), pages 551-565.
    4. Barro, Robert J & Lee, Jong-Wha, 2001. "International Data on Educational Attainment: Updates and Implications," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 541-563, July.
    5. Boriana Yontcheva & Mrs. Nadia Masud, 2005. "Does Foreign Aid Reduce Poverty? Empirical Evidence from Nongovernmental and Bilateral Aid," IMF Working Papers 2005/100, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Chang, Charles C. & Fernández-Arias, Eduardo & Servén, Luis, 1998. "Measuring Aid Flows: A New Approach," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1297, Inter-American Development Bank.
    7. Swaroop, Vinaya & Jha, Shikha & Sunil Rajkumar, Andrew, 2000. "Fiscal effects of foreign aid in a federal system of governance: The case of India," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 307-330, September.
    8. repec:bla:rdevec:v:4:y:2000:i:2:p:156-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Kosack, Stephen, 2003. "Effective Aid: How Democracy Allows Development Aid to Improve the Quality of Life," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-22, January.
    10. Keith Griffin and Terry McKinley, 1994. "A New Framework for Development Cooperation," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-1994-04, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    11. World Bank, 2009. "Geography in Motion: World Development Report 2009 (excerpt)," Transnational Corporations Review, Ottawa United Learning Academy, vol. 1(3), pages 40-46, September.
    12. Charles C. Chang & Eduardo Fernández-Arias & Luis Serven, 1998. "Measuring Aid Flows: A New Approach," Research Department Publications 4146, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    13. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    14. Collier, Paul & Dehn, Jan, 2001. "Aid, shocks, and growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2688, The World Bank.
    15. William Easterly, 2003. "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 23-48, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hassan, Sherif, 2016. "Seventy Years of Official Development Assistance: Reflections on the Working Age Population," MPRA Paper 74835, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Sakiru Oladele Akinbode & Tobi Michael Bolarinwa, 2020. "Effect of Foreign Aid on Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa:A System GMM Approach," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 18(1), pages 19-38.
    3. Kar, Ashim Kumar, 2016. "Aid and Human Development: Is There A Role for Good Policy Environment?," MPRA Paper 95433, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2018.
    4. Ngoura Ndjidda & Ngo Bilong Adèe Amoa & Mohammadou Nourou, 2022. "Agricultural Growth in Cameroon: What Effects of Official Development Assistance Financing? [Croissance Agricole au Cameroun : Quels effets du financement de l'Aide Publique au Développement ?]," Post-Print hal-03858915, HAL.
    5. Lis, Piotr, 2018. "The impact of armed conflict and terrorism on foreign aid: A sector-level analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 283-294.
    6. Sherif M. Hassan, 2020. "Revisiting the Development Impact of Sectorally Disaggregated Foreign Aid," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), pages 123-149, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrick Guillaumont & Laurent Wagner, 2014. "Aid Effectiveness for Poverty Reduction: Lessons from Cross‑country Analyses, with a Special Focus on Vulnerable Countries," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(HS01), pages 217-261.
    2. Ralf Hepp, 2005. "Can Debt Relief Buy Growth?," International Finance 0510003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2010. "Fiscal federalism and foreign transfers: does inter-jurisdictional competition increase foreign aid effectiveness?," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 10/10, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    4. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2012. "Aid, Growth and Devolution," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1723-1749.
    5. Lessmann, Christian & Markwardt, Gunther, 2009. "Aid, growth and decentralization," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 09/09, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    6. Mr. Sanjeev Gupta & Ms. Catherine A Pattillo & Ms. Smita Wagh, 2006. "Are Donor Countries Giving More or Less Aid?," IMF Working Papers 2006/001, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Kar, Ashim Kumar, 2016. "Aid and Human Development: Is There A Role for Good Policy Environment?," MPRA Paper 95433, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2018.
    8. Juliana Yael Milovich, 2018. "Does Aid Reduce Poverty?," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp122.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    9. Kimura, Hidemi & Mori, Yuko & Sawada, Yasuyuki, 2012. "Aid Proliferation and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-10.
    10. Robert K. Fleck & Christopher Kilby, 2006. "World Bank Independence: A Model and Statistical Analysis of US Influence," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 224-240, May.
    11. HEPP, Ralf, 2010. "CONSEQUENCES OF DEBT RELIEF INITIATIVES IN THE 1990s," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 10(1).
    12. Kourtellos, Andros & Tan, Chih Ming & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2007. "Is the relationship between aid and economic growth nonlinear?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 515-540, September.
    13. Katarina Juselius & Niels Framroze Møller & Finn Tarp, 2014. "The Long-Run Impact of Foreign Aid in 36 African Countries: Insights from Multivariate Time Series Analysis," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(2), pages 153-184, April.
    14. Mark McGillivray, 2006. "Aid Allocation and Fragile States," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2006-01, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. David Roodman, 2007. "The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development, and Cross-Country Empirics," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 255-277, May.
    16. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Henrik Hansen & Finn Tarp, 2004. "On The Empirics of Foreign Aid and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(496), pages 191-216, June.
    17. Kilby, Christopher, 2005. "Aid and regulation," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 325-345, May.
    18. Ma. Cecilia Calderón & Alberto Chong, 2006. "¿Contribuye la ayuda extranjera a reducir la desigualdad del ingreso?," Research Department Publications 4438, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    19. Ralf Hepp, 2005. "Health Expenditures Under the HIPC Debt Initiative," International Finance 0510005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Christian Lessmann & Gunther Markwardt, 2010. "Decentralization and Foreign Aid Effectiveness: Do Aid Modality and Federal Design Matter in Poverty Alleviation?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3035, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Aid; Social Development; Human Development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jed:journl:v:39:y:2014:i:4:p:99-115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sung Y. Park (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eccaukr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.