IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkwp/1116.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Halving poverty by doubling aid: how well founded is the optimism of the World Bank?

Author

Listed:
  • Langhammer, Rolf J.

Abstract

The article criticizes the World Bank as overy optimistic concerning its ability to raise the effectiveness of aid by concentrating aid on countries with "good" policies. It is shown that aid flows to the main recipient regions yielded the highest correlation to growth when their magnitudes shrank. It is argued that more aid can impair the quality of domestic policies in the recipients (endogeneity problem). The paper instead pleads for a shift of aid policies from country-oriented to issue-oriented aid. An international endowment fund under supranational law should help to finance such issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Langhammer, Rolf J., 2002. "Halving poverty by doubling aid: how well founded is the optimism of the World Bank?," Kiel Working Papers 1116, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/2785/1/kap1116.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nunnenkamp, Peter, 2002. "Shooting the messenger of good news: a critical look at the World Bank's success story of effective aid," Kiel Working Papers 1103, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. C-J. Dalgaard & H. Hansen, 2001. "On Aid, Growth and Good Policies," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 17-41.
    3. Kanbur, Ravi & Sandler, Todd & Morrison, Kevin, 1999. "The Future of Development Assistance: Common Pools and International Public Goods," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1629, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    4. Hansen, Henrik & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Aid and growth regressions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 547-570, April.
    5. William Easterly, 2002. "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262550423, December.
    6. Collier, Paul & Dollar, David, 2001. "Can the World Cut Poverty in Half? How Policy Reform and Effective Aid Can Meet International Development Goals," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1787-1802, November.
    7. Enzo Grilli & Markus Riess, 1992. "EC aid to associated countries: distribution and determinants," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 128(2), pages 202-220, June.
    8. Younger, Stephen D., 1992. "Aid and the Dutch disease: Macroeconomic management when everybody loves you," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 20(11), pages 1587-1597, November.
    9. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    10. Feyzioglu, Tarhan & Swaroop, Vinaya & Zhu, Min, 1998. "A Panel Data Analysis of the Fungibility of Foreign Aid," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 12(1), pages 29-58, January.
    11. Olson, Mancur, 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 567-576, September.
    12. Robert H. Bates, 2000. "Ethnicity and Development in Africa: A Reappraisal," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 131-134, May.
    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. Thiele, Rainer, 2003. "Perspektiven der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 2899, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    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. Rolf J. Langhammer, 2004. "Halving Poverty by Doubling Aid: Is There Reason for Optimism?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 81-98, January.
    2. Thiele, Rainer, 2003. "Perspektiven der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 2899, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. 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.
    4. Patrick GUILLAUMONT, 2009. "Aid effectiveness for poverty reduction: macroeconomic overview and emerging issues," Working Papers P05, FERDI.
    5. Roland Hodler, 2004. "Redistribution to Rent Seekers, Foreign Aid and Economic Growth," Diskussionsschriften dp0406, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    6. 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.
    7. Yuan K. Chou & Hayat Khan, 2004. "Explaining Africa's Growth Tragedy: A Theoretical Model of Dictatorship and Kleptocracy," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 922, The University of Melbourne.
    8. Mina Baliamoune‐Lutz & George Mavrotas, 2009. "Aid Effectiveness: Looking at the Aid–Social Capital–Growth Nexus," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 510-525, August.
    9. Juergen Bitzer & Erkan Goeren, 2018. "Foreign Aid and Subnational Development: A Grid Cell Analysis," Working Papers V-407-18, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2018.
    10. K C Neanidis, 2005. "Aid, Budgetary Policies, and the Macroeconomy: Growth, Inflation, and Welfare," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 58, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    11. Rati Ram, 2004. "Recipient country's 'policies' and the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in developing countries: additional evidence," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(2), pages 201-211.
    12. Mark McGillivray, 2006. "Aid Allocation and Fragile States," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2006-01, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Tony Addison & George Mavrotas & Mark McGillivray, 2005. "Development assistance and development finance: evidence and global policy agendas," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(6), pages 819-836.
    16. Chatterjee, Santanu & Giuliano, Paola & Kaya, Ilker, 2007. "Where Has All the Money Gone? Foreign Aid and the Quest for Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 2858, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Tarp, Finn, 2006. "Aid and Development," MPRA Paper 13171, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Kyriakos C. Neanidis, 2005. "Aid, Budgetary Policies, and the Macroeconomy: Growth, Inflation, and Welfare," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0535, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    19. Johnson P. Asiama & Peter Quartey, 2009. "Foreign Aid and the Human Development Indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 25(1), pages 57-83, January.
    20. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2005-054 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. repec:bla:rdevec:v:13:y:2009:i:s1:p:510-525 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan, 2008. "Donor policy rules and aid effectiveness," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1895-1920, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic growth; poverty reduction; aid effectiveness; policy orientation; ‘Dutch Disease’ effects of aid; development aid;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
    • O2 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy

    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:zbw:ifwkwp:1116. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.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.