Aid Dependence and the Quality of Governance : A Cross-Country Empirical Analysis

Knack, Stephen

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY;    AID DEPENDENCE;    AID FLOWS;    BINDING CONSTRAINT;    BUDGETARY SUPPORT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2396
RP-ID  :  WPS2396

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Good governance -- in the form ofinstitutions that establish predictable, impartial, andconsistently enforced rules for investors -- is crucial forthe sustained and rapid growth of per capita incomes in poorcountries. Aid dependence can undermine institutionalquality by weakening accountability, encouraging rentseeking and corruption, fomenting conflict over control ofaid funds, siphoning off scarce talent from the bureaucracy,and alleviating pressures to reform inefficient policies andinstitutions. The author's analyses of cross-countrydata provide evidence that higher aid levels erode thequality of governance, as measured by indexes ofbureaucratic quality, corruption, and the rule of law. Thisnegative relationship strengthens when instruments for aidare used to correct for potential reverse causality. It isrobust to changes in the sample and to several alternativeforms of estimation. Recent studies have concluded thataid's impact on economic growth and infant mortality isconditional on policy and institutional gaps. Theauthor's results indicate that the size of theinstitutional gap itself increases with aid levels.