First impressions: How leader changes affect bilateral aid
Tobias Rommel and
Paul Schaudt
Journal of Public Economics, 2020, vol. 185, issue C
Abstract:
This paper investigates a new mechanism to explain politically induced changes in bilateral aid. We argue that shifts in the foreign policy alignment between a donor and a recipient country following leadership changes induce reallocation of aid. Utilizing data from the G7 and 130 developing countries between 1975 and 2012 and employing high dimensional fixed effects models, we show that incoming leaders in recipient countries, which politically converge towards their current donors, receive more aid commitments, compared to those that diverge. Accounting for donor leader change, we additionally find that incumbent recipient leaders have an opportunity to get even more aid when political change in donor countries moves them closer to the donor's foreign policy position. Thus, leadership turnover in recipient and donor countries makes otherwise inconsequential deviations in foreign policy alignment highly consequential for aid provision.
Keywords: Dyadic leader change; UNGA voting realignment; Development aid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F35 F53 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272719301690
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: First Impressions: How Leader Changes Affect Bilateral Aid (2016) 
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:eee:pubeco:v:185:y:2020:i:c:s0047272719301690
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104107
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba
More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().