Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China s Foreign Assistance

Andreas Fuchs, Axel Dreher, Roland Hodler, Bradley C. Parks and Paul Raschky

VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We investigate whether the political leaders of aid-receiving countries use foreign aid inflows to further their own political or personal interests. Aid allocation biased by leaders selfish interests arguably reduces the effectiveness of aid, negatively affecting development outcomes. We examine whether more Chinese aid is allocated to the political leaders birth regions and regions populated by the ethnic group to which the leader belongs, controlling for objective indicators of need. We have collected data on 117 African leaders birthplaces and ethnic groups and geocoded 1,955 Chinese development finance projects across 3,553 physical locations in Africa over the 2000-2012 period. The results from various fixed-effects regressions show that current political leaders birth regions receive substantially larger financial flows than other regions. We do not find evidence that leaders shift aid to regions populated by groups who share their ethnicity.

JEL-codes: D73 F35 P33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cna, nep-dev and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China's Foreign Assistance (2016)
Working Paper: Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China's Foreign Assistance (2015)
Working Paper: Aid on Demand: African Leaders and the Geography of China's Foreign Assistance (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112838

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