IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2008-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Aid and Fiscal Instability

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen O’Connell
  • Christopher Adam
  • Edward Buffie

Abstract

We show that a combination of temporariness and spending pressure is intrinsic to the aid relationship. In our analysis, recipients rationally discount the pronouncements of donors about the duration of their commitments because in equilibrium they know that some donors will honor those commitments while others will not. Donor types pool in equilibrium; in sharp contrast to conventional signaling situations, there is no separating equilibrium in pure strategies. Moreover, pooling necessarily creates what we call ex ante fiscal instability: expenditure smoothing is perfect ex post if the donor proves permanent, but if the donor is temporary the recipient faces an aid collapse and a fiscal adjustment problem. The Samaritan’s dilemma is at work here, in the guise of a use-it-or-lose-it restriction on spending out of aid. This restriction can produce ex ante fiscal instability even when information is symmetric.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen O’Connell & Christopher Adam & Edward Buffie, 2008. "Aid and Fiscal Instability," CSAE Working Paper Series 2008-18, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2008-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:43ef03ee-832c-41e0-a4e9-402a253a9503
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roemer, Michael, 1989. "The macroeconomics of counterpart funds revisited," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 795-807, June.
    2. Azam, Jean-Paul & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 2003. "Contracting for aid," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 25-58, February.
    3. Mr. Andrew Berg & Mr. Mumtaz Hussain & Mr. Shaun K. Roache & Ms. Amber A Mahone & Mr. Tokhir N Mirzoev & Mr. Shekhar Aiyar, 2007. "The Macroeconomics of Scaling Up Aid: Lessons from Recent Experience," IMF Occasional Papers 2007/002, International Monetary Fund.
    4. C. S. Adam & S. A. O’Connell, 1999. "Aid, Taxation and Development in Sub‐Saharan Africa," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 225-253, November.
    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. Christopher Adam & Anthony M Simpasa, 2010. "Harnessing Resource Revenues for Prosperity in Zambia," OxCarre Working Papers 036, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    2. Bwire, Thomas & Lloyd, Tim & Morrissey, Oliver, 2013. "A Timeseries Analysis of the Impact of Foreign Aid on Central Government's Fiscal Budget in Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series 101, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Carter Patrick, 2013. "Does Foreign Aid Displace Domestic Taxation?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-47, August.
    4. repec:idq:ictduk:13701 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Thomas Bwire & Oliver Morrissey & Tim Lloyd, 2013. "A Timeseries Analysis of the Impact of Foreign Aid on Central Government's Fiscal Budget in Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-101, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Buffie, Edward F. & O'Connell, Stephen A. & Adam, Christopher, 2010. "Fiscal inertia, donor credibility, and the monetary management of aid surges," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 287-298, November.
    7. Muntasir Murshed, 2019. "An Empirical Investigation of Foreign Financial Assistance Inflows and Its Fungibility Analyses: Evidence from Bangladesh," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-25, September.

    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. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    2. Almuth Scholl, 2009. "Aid Effectiveness and Limited Enforceable Conditionality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 377-391, April.
    3. Chatterjee Santanu & Giuliano Paola & Kaya Ilker, 2012. "Where Has All the Money Gone? Foreign Aid and the Composition of Government Spending," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-36, August.
    4. Jean-François Ruhashyankiko, 2005. "Why Do Some Countries Manage to Extract Growth from Foreign Aid?," IMF Working Papers 2005/053, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Neri, Marcelo Côrtes & Xerez, Marcelo, 2004. "Aspectos dinâmicos de um sistema de metas sociais," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 563, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    6. Altaghlibi, Moutaz & Wagener, Florian, 2019. "Unconditional aid and green growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 158-181.
    7. 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.
    8. Bag, Parimal Kanti & Roy Chowdhury, Prabal, 2016. "Gradualism in aid and reforms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 108-123.
    9. Jean-Paul Azam, 2005. "Suicide-bombing as inter-generational investment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 177-198, January.
    10. Thorsten Janus, 2009. "Aid and the Soft Budget Constraint," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(2), pages 264-275, May.
    11. Giulio Federico, 2004. "Samaritans, Rotten Kids and Policy Conditionality," Development and Comp Systems 0409004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jean‐Paul Azam & Alexandra Delacroix, 2006. "Aid and the Delegated Fight Against Terrorism," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 330-344, May.
    13. Bigsten, Arne, 2006. "Donor coordination and the uses of aid," Working Papers in Economics 196, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    14. William Jack, 2008. "Conditioning Aid On Social Expenditures," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 125-140, March.
    15. Howard White, 1995. "Import Support Aid: Experiences from Tanzania and Zambia," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 13(1), pages 41-64, March.
    16. Richard Chisik & Nazanin Behzadan & Harun Onder & Apurva Sanghi, 2016. "Aid, Remittances, the Dutch Disease, Refugees, and Kenya," Working Papers 062, Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Economics.
    17. Emmanuelle Auriol & Josepa Miquel-Florensa, 2019. "Taxing fragmented aid to improve aid efficiency," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 453-477, September.
    18. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel Henderson & Romain Houssa, 2014. "Significant drivers of growth in Africa," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 339-354, December.
    19. Barr, Abigail & Fafchamps, Marcel & Owens, Trudy, 2005. "The governance of non-governmental organizations in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 657-679, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Aid; Fiscal instability; Use it or lose it; Samaritan’s dilemma; Pooling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O23 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    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:csa:wpaper:2008-18. 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: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.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.