Publication: Foreign Aid and Business Bottlenecks : A Study of Aid Effectiveness
Loading...
Published
2011-01-01
ISSN
Date
2012-03-19
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper proposes a new framework to analyze aid effectiveness. Using World Bank firm survey data and OECD aid flow data, the authors analyze whether aid targets areas that firms in developing countries have identified as obstacles for their growth and whether aid actually improves firms' perceptions of those areas. The analysis finds that aid does target the areas that firms have identified as obstacles; aid funding trade related projects is particularly effective in targeting the correct countries. For the most part, aid has a positive impact on improving firms' perceptions, particularly in the business environment. And for each target area, smaller aid disbursements tend to be more effective at improving firm perceptions than larger disbursements.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ferro, Esteban; Wilson, John S.. 2011. Foreign Aid and Business Bottlenecks : A Study of Aid Effectiveness. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5546. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3317 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication The Evolution of Local Participatory Democracy in Nepal(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world’s most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal’s modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are “induced” by external interventions versus being “organically” rooted in indigenous practices. The paper identifies three broad phases: an initial focus on participation in project implementation; a subsequent phase that expanded citizen engagement; and a third phase of citizen empowerment, culminating in the 2015 federal constitution, which granted unprecedented local autonomy. The analysis yields five key findings. First, over the past 50 years, successive reforms have progressively expanded opportunities for citizens to influence local decision-making. Second, these reforms have integrated traditional participatory mechanisms into formal institutions of local government. Third, although central-level initiatives exist, most participatory platforms continue to operate at the local level. Fourth, the federal constitution has created a new landscape of local democracy, embedding autonomy and accountability. Fifth, although they are still valued in many ethnic and territorial communities, traditional participatory practices are gradually disappearing. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to help donor agencies and governments strengthen Nepal’s democratic trajectory. It argues that effective interventions should build on Nepal’s deep participatory traditions while recognizing the constitutional reality of far-reaching local autonomy.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication Closing the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges in Law and Practice for Female Entrepreneurs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these challenges. It discusses institutional factors, financial factors, human capital factors, and social and cultural factors. The literature overview is complemented by a series of stylized facts that illustrate how overcoming some of these existing barriers is correlated with improved women’s entrepreneurship and female labor force participation, drawing on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law database as well as the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. The findings underscore the need for creating an enabling environment where women can thrive as entrepreneurs.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Aid to the Services Sector : Does It Affect Manufacturing Exports?(2011-07-01)This paper evaluates the impact of foreign aid to five service sectors (transportation, information and communications technologies, energy, banking/financial services, and business services) on exports of downstream manufacturing sectors in developing countries. To address the reverse causality between aid and exports, the analysis relies on an original identification strategy that exploits (i) the variation of aid flows to service sectors, and (ii) the variation of service-intensities across industrial sectors and countries using input-output data. The authors find a positive effect of aid to services, in general, on downstream manufacturing exports of developing countries across regions and income-level groups.Publication The Effect of Product Standards on Agricultural Exports from Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)The authors create a standards restrictiveness index using newly available data on maximum residue levels of pesticides for 61 importing countries. The paper analyzes the impact that food safety standards have on international trade of agricultural products. The findings suggest that more restrictive standards are associated, on average, with a lower probability of observing trade. However, after controlling for sample selection and the proportion of exporting firms in a gravity model, the analysis finds that the effect of standards on trade intensity is indistinguishable from zero. This is consistent with the assumption that meeting stringent standards increases primarily the fixed costs of exporting. Once firms enter the market, however, standards do not impact the level of exports. The analysis also finds a greater marginal effect of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) standards on the probability of trade, relative to other countries' standards, keeping in mind however that on average BRICS standards are less restrictive. The analysis also suggests that exporters in low-income countries are more adversely affected by stricter standards.Publication Targeted Transfers in Poor Countries : Revisiting the Tradeoffs and Policy Options(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-05)Two tradeoffs have been widely seen to severely constrain the scope for attacking poverty using redistributive transfers in poor countries: an equity-efficiency tradeoff and an insurance-efficiency tradeoff. The author provides a critical overview of recent theoretical and empirical work that has called into question the extent of these tradeoffs in poor countries. He argues that these aggregate tradeoffs are often exaggerated. Indeed, they may not even be binding constraints in practice, given market failures. There appears to be scope for using carefully designed transfer schemes as an effective tool against both transient and chronic poverty. However, the same factors that weaken the tradeoffs also suggest that efficient redistributive policies might look rather different to the programs often found in practice.Publication The Effect of Product Standards on Agricultural Exports(Elsevier, 2015-01)We introduce a standards restrictiveness index to analyze the impact that food safety standards have on international exports of agricultural products. Our new measure of standards restrictiveness is created using maximum residue levels of pesticides for 61 importing countries and 66 different products. The index accounts for both the number of pesticides regulated for each product and the allowable level for those pesticides by each importer. The findings suggest that more restrictive standards are associated, on average, with a lower probability of observing trade. However, after controlling for sample selection and the proportion of exporting firms in a gravity model, the analysis finds that the effect of standards on trade intensity in most cases is indistinguishable from zero. This is consistent with the assumption that meeting stringent standards increases primarily the fixed cost to export to a destination. Once a firm adjusts its production to comply with the standards of a foreign market, those standards do not impact the intensity of exports to that market. Finally, our results suggest that exports from developing countries are particularly constrained by stricter standards.Publication Economic Growth in Egypt(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008)The paper focuses its analysis on the last three decades of the twentieth century. The basic assumption is that Egypt's economic performance during this period was less than satisfactory compared with the most successful examples in the far East and elsewhere. The paper also assumes that Egypt's initial conditions at midcentury compared favorably with the winners in the development race at the end of the century. Egypt has achieved positive progress, no doubt, yet compared with the higher performers in Asia, and given its favorable good initial conditions, the record seems quite mediocre. By mid-twentieth century, Egypt's agriculture had almost reached its limits. Egypt, therefore, faced a new challenge: a need to transform itself into an industrial society. This objective was only partially achieved. The paper identifies three interrelated factors that helped hinder Egypt's accession to a new industrial society. The first factor is a strong state and a weak society. An authoritarian state that in its endeavor to preserve its prerogatives had to give up good governance practices and limit the creative initiative of the individuals. The second factor is a semi-rentier economy. The availability of windfall revenues not only reduced the pressure for change but also promoted a new rentier mentality that undermined the emergence of an industrial spirit. The third factor is an inadequate education system. This system failed to provide the proper skills and values required for the industrial society. These factors, moreover, are interdependent and reinforce each other.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Incentives and Investments(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-12)This paper analyzes how investment incentives may or may not be used to foster private investment, particularly in developing countries. As practitioners and policymakers can attest, political economy exerts a powerful influence on incentives. Many incentives especially generous ones have persisted because of lobbying by special interests and politicians' need to curry favor. Yet little research has been done on how political economy affects incentive policy. Second, the paper sheds light on the role that political economy plays in the popularity of incentives and the related shortcomings. Incentives are sometimes used to dole out favors to investors, so investors who benefit from incentives resist attempts to eliminate them. This paper suggests a way to tackle such problems. Third, the paper compiles good practices on managing and administering incentives in developing countries, drawing on government and private sector experiences. Finally, the paper provides policymakers with a framework for analyzing the efficacy of investment incentives based on the sector and level of development involved, and suggests reforms for moving toward best practice.Publication The Argentine Pension System, its Success and Challenges(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022)Over the last two decades, the Argentine pension system has made extraordinary progress in extending coverage--now reaching to nearly one hundred percent of the elderly--by expanding its non-contributory scheme and establishing automatic benefit adjustment mechanisms and increasing the replacement rate. Nonetheless, important challenges remain which may require public policy interventions in the near future. Some challenges are relevant in the short term, relating to coverage and equity of the system, while others are important in the longer term associated with the financial sustainability of the system in the context of population aging. The non-contributory benefits to reduce the coverage gap did not consider the labor history of workers and their past partial contributions, generating a horizontal inequality problem. Additionally, the coexistence of different pension schemes is a source of inequity within the national system, where provincial schemes and special and differential regimes coexist, each with its own rules and different generosity of benefits. The achievements of the pension system in terms of coverage and adequacy have impacted costs. In 2020, public spending on pensions reached almost 12 percent of GDP, similar to that of developed countries where population aging is considerably higher. In this context, policy options presented in this paper seek to redefine the objectives of the system, seeking greater equity and sustainability. Based on this premise, the document explores the benefits of redesigning the system using a two-pillar model, i.e. a universal and basic benefit related to the protection against the risk of ending up in a situation of poverty plus a contributory scheme, proportional to the contribution made by workers during their employment history. Addressing the coverage issue by incorporating this dimension would not only improve equity of contributions and benefits, but also generate incentives to extend the working life of older adults. At the same time, a strategy that harmonizes rules across different schemes, eliminates inequities and management issues, and focuses on the beneficiary —and not on the benefit— as the center of the system, would bring the model closer to a more equitable and sustainable system.Publication COVID-19 and African Firms(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04)Drawing on a representative survey of firms in 38 countries, eight of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper documents the impact of COVID-19 and firms’ coping strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa, benchmarking with other regions. The paper shows that the impact of the pandemic is more pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa compared with other regions. This disproportionate impact is not explained by differences in sectoral composition and other firm characteristics, but likely by the level of development. This underscores the important economic and structural contexts that predate the pandemic in understanding the differential impact. Contrary to expectations, the findings show that businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to adjust their operations or products and services to adapt to the shock than those in other regions. However, firms in the region lag in leveraging digital technologies, remote working, and e-commerce, compared with those in other regions.Publication Evidence on Public Procurement from Firm-Level Surveys(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-01-03)Public procurement is at the intersection between the public and the private sectors. Policy makers and practitioners are increasingly paying attention to the potential catalytic role of public procurement to promote economic growth and inclusive and sustainable development, for example through participation of SMEs and women-owned firms in this market. However, despite a growing academic literature, there is still limited evidence on the link between public procurement and firms, which this paper contributes to address in two ways. First, this paper provides guidance on how to design a high-quality firm-level survey to study public procurement from the perspective of firms. Second, this paper presents some of the statistics and stylized facts that can be generated on public procurement from the existing World Bank Enterprise Surveys data, covering more than 150 countries worldwide. To sustain evidence-based policies in public procurement, firm-level survey data can be a valuable source of information on public procurement market. In particular, it can capture dimensions such as views and perceptions of firms that cannot be observed from e-government procurement data, it allows to study firms that never entered the public procurement market, and it provides data for countries that have not adopted an eGP system yet. Together with legislative and institutional reviews, and the analysis of transactional procurement data, firm-level survey data can be used to identify weaknesses of a public procurement system and inform reform efforts. This paper is part of a broader effort to continuously expand the available data, statistics, and tools for evidence-based policy making in public procurement.