Publication: Aid Tying and Donor Fragmentation
Loading...
Published
2012-01-01
ISSN
Date
2012-03-19
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This study tests two opposing hypotheses about the impact of aid fragmentation on the practice of aid tying. In one, when a small number of donors dominate the aid market in a country, they may exploit their monopoly power by tying more aid to purchases from contractors based in their own countries. Alternatively, when donors have a larger share of the aid market, they may have stronger incentives to maximize the development impact of their aid by tying less of it. Empirical tests strongly and consistently support the latter hypothesis. The key finding -- that higher donor aid shares are associated with less aid tying -- is robust to recipient controls, donor fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation. When recipient countries are grouped by their scores on corruption perception indexes, higher shares of aid are significantly related to lower aid tying only in the less-corrupt sub-sample. This finding is consistent with the argument that aid tying can be an efficient response by donors when losses from corruption may rival or exceed losses from tying aid. When aid tying is more costly, as proxied by donor country size and income, it is less prevalent. Aid tying is lower in the Least Developed Countries, consistent with the OECD Development Assistance Committee's recommendation to its members.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Knack, Stephen; Smets, Lodewijk. 2012. Aid Tying and Donor Fragmentation. Paper is funded by the Knowledge for Change
Program (KCP),Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5934. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3219 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10)This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.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 Rigging the Scores: Corruption through Scoring Rule Manipulation in Public Procurement Auctions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-12-02)Public procurement is highly susceptible to corruption, especially in developing countries. Although open auctions are widely adopted to curb it, this paper finds that corruption remains prevalent even within this procurement format. Procurement officers can collaborate with firms to manipulate scoring rules, ensuring predetermined winners, while corrupt firms submit noncompetitive bids to meet minimum bidder requirements. Using extensive data from Chinese public procurement auctions, the paper introduces model-driven statistical tools to detect such corruption, identifying a corruption rate of 65 percent. A procurement expert audit survey confirms the tools’ reliability, with a 91 percent probability that experts recognize suspicious scoring rules when flagged. Firm-level analysis reveals that local, state-owned, and less productive firms are favored in corrupt auctions. Lastly, the paper explores policy implications. Analysis of the national anti-corruption campaign since 2012 suggests that general investigations may be insufficient to address deeply ingrained corrupt practices. Using counterfactuals based on an estimated structural model, the paper shows that implementing anonymous call-for-tender evaluations could improve social welfare by 10 percent by eliminating suspicious rules and encouraging broader participation.Publication Labor Demand in the Age of Generative AI: Early Evidence from the U.S. Job Posting Data(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-18)This paper examines the causal impact of generative artificial intelligence on U.S. labor demand using online job posting data. Exploiting ChatGPT’s release in November 2022 as an exogenous shock, the paper applies difference-in-differences and event study designs to estimate the job displacement effects of generative artificial intelligence. The identification strategy compares labor demand for occupations with high versus low artificial intelligence substitution vulnerability following ChatGPT’s launch, conditioning on similar generative artificial intelligence exposure levels to isolate substitution effects from complementary uses. The analysis uses 285 million job postings collected by Lightcast from the first quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2025Q2. The findings show that the number of postings for occupations with above-median artificial intelligence substitution scores fell by an average of 12 percent relative to those with below-median scores. The effect increased from 6 percent in the first year after the launch to 18 percent by the third year. Losses were particularly acute for entry-level positions that require neither advanced degrees (18 percent) nor extensive experience (20 percent), as well as those in administrative support (40 percent) and professional services (30 percent). Although generative artificial intelligence generates new occupations and enhances productivity, which may increase labor demand, early evidence suggests that some occupations may be less likely to be complemented by generative artificial intelligence than others.Publication Investment Policy Reforms and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-12-01)Foreign direct investment has the potential to introduce much-needed capital and expertise in emerging and developing economies. To attract foreign direct investment, many countries have eased restrictions on foreign ownership in various sectors, reformed their institutions, and set up investment promotion agencies. Until the mid-2010s, Ethiopia remained one of the few countries that resisted this trend, with several stringent restrictions in place on foreign direct investment entry and operations in the country. This study employs a synthetic control method to examine patterns in foreign capital inflows following a series of investment policy reforms that were substantively introduced in the mid-2010s (circa 2015). The study offers evidence that investment policy reforms contributed to a significant foreign direct investment inflow in Ethiopia, compared to what would have occurred in the absence of these policies. An alternative strategy that conservatively specifies the donor country pool using an AI-assisted deep search technique changes the donor pool weighting matrix of the synthetic control method, but the estimated policy effects largely remain robust to this specification. The findings highlight the importance of targeted reforms in promoting foreign direct investment inflow in developing countries.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication When Do Donors Trust Recipient Country Systems?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of recipient country systems for managing aid. The target is premised on a view that country systems are strengthened when donors trust recipients to manage aid funds, but undermined when donors manage aid through their own separate parallel systems. This study provides an analytical framework for understanding donors' decisions to trust or bypass country systems. Empirical tests are conducted using data from three OECD-DAC surveys designed to monitor progress toward Paris Declaration goals. Tests show that a donor's use of the recipient country's systems is positively related to: (1) the donor's share of aid provided to the recipient (a proxy for the donor's reputational stake in the country's development); (2) perceptions of corruption in the recipient country (a proxy for the trustworthiness or quality of the country's systems); and (3) public support for aid in the donor country (a proxy for the donor's risk tolerance). Findings are robust to corrections for potential sample selection, omitted variables or endogeneity bias.Publication Aid and Trust in Country Systems(2009-07-01)The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of recipient country systems for managing aid. A consensus view holds that country systems are strengthened when donors trust recipients to manage aid funds, but undermined when donors manage aid through their own separate parallel systems. This paper provides an analytical framework for understanding donors decisions to trust in country systems or instead to micro-manage aid using their own systems and procedures. Where country systems are sufficiently weak, the development impact of aid is reduced by donors reliance on them. Trust in country systems will be sub-optimal, however, if donors have multiple objectives in aid provision rather than a sole objective of maximizing development outcomes. Empirical tests are conducted using data from an OECD survey designed to monitor progress toward Paris Declaration goals. Trust in country systems is measured in three ways: use of the recipient s public financial management systems, use of direct budget support, and use of program-based approaches. The authors show using fixed effects regression that a donor s trust in recipient country systems is positively related to (1) trustworthiness or quality of those systems, (2) tolerance for risk on the part of the donor s constituents, as measured by public support for providing aid, and (3) the donor s ability to internalize more of the benefits of investing in country systems, as measured by the donor s share of all aid provided to a recipient.Publication Donor Fragmentation and Bureaucratic Quality in Aid Recipients(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-01)This paper analyzes the impact of donor fragmentation on the quality of government bureaucracy in aid-recipient nations. A formal model of a donor's decision to hire government administrators to manage donor-funded projects predicts that the number of administrators hired declines as the donor's share of other projects in the country increases, and as the donor's "altruism" (concern for the success of other donors' projects) increases. These hypotheses are supported by cross-country empirical tests using an index of bureaucratic quality available for aid-recipient nations over the 1982-2001 period. Declines in bureaucratic quality are associated with higher donor fragmentation (reflecting the presence of many donors, each with a small share of aid), and with smaller shares of aid coming from multilateral agencies, a proxy for donor "altruism."Publication Interactions Among Donors' Aid Allocations : Evidence from an Exogenous World Bank Income Threshold(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09)This study investigates the effects of the World Bank's exogenously-determined income threshold for eligibility for concessionary International Development Association (IDA) loans on the allocations of bilateral donors. The donors might interpret the World Bank's policies and allocations across recipients as informative signals of where their own aid might be used most effectively. Alternatively, other donors might compensate for reduced IDA allocations by increasing their own aid. This paper shows that the signaling effect dominates any crowding out effects. The analysis uses panel data with country fixed effects and finds that aid from the bilateral donor countries is significantly reduced after countries cross the IDA income cutoff, controlling for other determinants of aid. Allocations by other donors are not sensitive to actual IDA disbursements, only to the IDA income threshold. Because crossing the income cutoff for eligibility significantly reduces aid levels from other donors as well as from the World Bank, government officials in recipient countries may have an incentive to manipulate their national accounts data to understate per capita income when it is near the IDA threshold. However, tests for "bunching" of observations just below the income threshold find no evidence to support data manipulation concerns. These findings suggest that graduation from IDA should be an even more gradual process than it already is, to dampen the sharp drops in aid experienced by countries after crossing an arbitrary income threshold.Publication World Bank Lending and the Quality of Economic Policy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-06)This study investigates the impact of World Bank development policy lending on the quality of economic policy. It finds that the quality of policy increases, but at a diminishing rate, with the cumulative number of policy loans. Similar results hold for the cumulative number of conditions attached to policy loans, although quadratic specifications indicate that additional conditions may even reduce the quality of policy beyond some point. The paper measures the quality of economic policy using the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessments of macro, debt, fiscal and structural policies, and considers only policy loans targeted at improvements in those areas. Previous studies finding weaker effects of policy lending on macro stability have failed to distinguish loans primarily intended to improve economic policy from other loans targeted at improvements in sector policies or in public management. The paper also shows that investing in economic policy does not "crowd out" policy improvements in other areas such as public sector governance or human development. The results are robust to using alternative indicators of policy quality, and correcting for endogeneity with system generalized methods of moments and cross-sectional two-stage least squares. The more positive results in the study relative to some previous studies based on earlier loans are consistent with claims by the World Bank that it has learned from its mistakes with traditional adjustment lending.
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 Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Spring 2025: Accelerating Growth through Entrepreneurship, Technology Adoption, and Innovation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-23)Business dynamism and economic growth in Europe and Central Asia have weakened since the late 2000s, with productivity growth driven largely by resource reallocation between firms and sectors rather than innovation. To move up the value chain, countries need to facilitate technology adoption, stronger domestic competition, and firm-level innovation to build a more dynamic private sector. Governments should move beyond broad support for small- and medium-sized enterprises and focus on enabling the most productive firms to expand and compete globally. Strengthening competition policies, reducing the presence of state-owned enterprises, and ensuring fair market access are crucial. Limited availability of long-term financing and risk capital hinders firm growth and innovation. Economic disruptions are a shock in the short term, but they provide an opportunity for implementing enterprise and structural reforms, all of which are essential for creating better-paying jobs and helping countries in the region to achieve high-income status.Publication Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2024: Better Education for Stronger Growth(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-17)Economic growth in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is likely to moderate from 3.5 percent in 2023 to 3.3 percent this year. This is significantly weaker than the 4.1 percent average growth in 2000-19. Growth this year is driven by expansionary fiscal policies and strong private consumption. External demand is less favorable because of weak economic expansion in major trading partners, like the European Union. Growth is likely to slow further in 2025, mostly because of the easing of expansion in the Russian Federation and Turkiye. This Europe and Central Asia Economic Update calls for a major overhaul of education systems across the region, particularly higher education, to unleash the talent needed to reinvigorate growth and boost convergence with high-income countries. Universities in the region suffer from poor management, outdated curricula, and inadequate funding and infrastructure. A mismatch between graduates' skills and the skills employers are seeking leads to wasted potential and contributes to the region's brain drain. Reversing the decline in the quality of education will require prioritizing improvements in teacher training, updated curricula, and investment in educational infrastructure. In higher education, reforms are needed to consolidate university systems, integrate them with research centers, and provide reskilling opportunities for adult workers.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.