Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts

Jørgen Andersen, Niels Johannesen and Bob Rijkers

No 9150, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5 percent at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.

Date: 2020-02-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/49320158 ... re-Bank-Accounts.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2022)
Working Paper: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2020)
Working Paper: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9150

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().