Coordination Failure in Foreign Aid

Halonen-Akatwijuka, Maija

World Bank, Washington, D.C.

关键词: FOREIGN AID;    DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE;    DEVELOPMENT AID;    SOCIAL SECTOR;    PUBLIC EXPENDITURES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3223
RP-ID  :  WPS3223

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The author analyzes the allocation offoreign aid to various sectors in a recipient developingcountry. Donors tend to favor social sectors over otherpublic expenditure programs. Due to incomplete information,donors may concentrate too much on priority sectors, leavinglower-priority yet important sectors lacking funds.Alternatively there may be gaps in services in priorityareas because of the information problem. The author findsthat the more similar preferences the donors have, the morescope there is for coordination failure. Therefore improvinginformation is particularly important when the parties havesimilar priorities. A joint database on planned projects andbudget allocations in each recipient country would providesuch information. The author's point is that suchdatabases should have both information on current projectsand forward-looking information on the planned activitiesneeded to improve aid coordination. She also analyzes theaid fungibility problem in an incomplete information settingand finds that incomplete information reduces thefungibility problem. On the other hand, incompleteinformation introduces coordination failure and theallocation can be inferior for both the recipient and the donor.