Organization of Disaster Aid Delivery: Spending Your Donations

J. Vernon Henderson and Yong Suk Lee

No 17707, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper analyzes how different organizational structures between funding and implementing agencies affect the quality of aid delivered and social agendas pursued across neighboring villages in a set disaster context. We model the implied objective functions and trade-offs concerning aid quality, aid quantity, and social agendas of different types of agencies. We analyze three waves of survey data on fishermen and fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia from 2005-2009, following the tsunami. Different organizational structures result in significantly different qualities of hard aid, differential willingness to share aid delivery with other NGOs in a village, and differential promotion of public good objectives and maintenance of village religious and occupational traditions. This is the first time these aspects have been modeled and quantified in the literature. Some well known international NGOs delivered housing with relatively low rates of reported faults such as leaky roofs and cracked walls; others had relatively high rates. For boats, some had very high rates of boat "failure", boats that sank upon launch, were not seaworthy, or fell apart within a month or two. We also document how a social agenda of particular agencies to promote greater equality can be thwarted and distorted by village leaders, potentially increasing inequality.

JEL-codes: F35 H4 H5 H84 L2 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-sea
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as J. Vernon Henderson & Yong Suk Lee, 2015. "Organization of Disaster Aid Delivery: Spending Your Donations," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 617 - 664.

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Journal Article: Organization of Disaster Aid Delivery: Spending Your Donations (2015)
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