IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00204840.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Big Push versus Absorptive Capacity. How to reconcile the Two Approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Guillaumont

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

In this paper we examine whether absorptive capacity can constitute sufficient justification for rejecting the proposal of a large aid increase to support the ‘big push'. We argue that the probability of a poverty trap exists for many countries, in particular the least developed countries (LDCs) and that an increase in aid is relevant for them. Moreover we show that the decrease in marginal aid returns is slower in vulnerable countries, which supports the rationale to include vulnerability as one of the aid-allocation criteria. We examine the main obstacles to absorptive capacity, such as disbursement constraints and short-term bottlenecks, macroeconomic problems, including loss in competitiveness and macroeconomic volatility, as well as the weakening of institutions. The general conclusion that we draw for reconciling the two approaches is that absorptive capacity strongly influenced by aid itself or by its modalities. The big push and absorptive capacity approaches cannot be reconciled without aid reform supported by an aid increase.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Guillaumont & Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney, 2007. "Big Push versus Absorptive Capacity. How to reconcile the Two Approaches," Post-Print hal-00204840, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00204840
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13581 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2008. "Adapting Aid Allocation Criteria to Development Goals," Working Papers P01, FERDI.
    3. Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2009. "Aid effectiveness for poverty reduction: macroeconomic overview and emerging issues," Working Papers P05, FERDI.
    4. Bandyopadhyay, Subhayu & Lahiri, Sajal & Younas, Javed, 2015. "Financing growth through foreign aid and private foreign loans: Nonlinearities and complementarities," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 75-96.
    5. Sylviane GUILLAUMONT JEANNENEY, 2008. "Les fondements éthiques de l’aide publique au développement : une application à la France," Working Papers 200809, CERDI.
    6. Chauvet, Lisa & Ehrhart, Hélène, 2018. "Aid and growth: evidence from firm-level data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 461-477.
    7. Patrick GUILLAUMONT & Sylviane GUILLAUMONT JEANNENEY, 2009. "State fragility and economic vulnerability: What is measured and why?," Working Papers P07, FERDI.
    8. Harb, Nermeen & Hall, Stephen G., 2019. "Does foreign aid play a role in the maintenance of economic growth? A non-linear analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 192-204.
    9. repec:bla:rdevec:v:13:y:2009:i:s1:p:373-381 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Patrick Guillaumont, 2011. "Adapting Aid Allocation Criteria to Development Goals," CERDI Working papers halshs-00556806, HAL.
    11. Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney, 2011. "Les fondements éthiques de l'aide publique au développement : une application à la France," CERDI Working papers halshs-00556808, HAL.

    More about this item

    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:hal:journl:hal-00204840. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.