 Aid versus trade revisitedChristopher S. Adam and Stephen O'Connell () No 2000-19, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Abstract: This paper examines the (non) equivalance between aid flows and trade preferences as alternative forms of donor assistance in the presence of learning-by-doing externalities in recipient country export production. Using a two-period model based on vanWijnbergen (1985), in which the productivity externality consistitues the only (inter-temporal) distortion, we show that switching donor support on the margin from aid to trade preferences can increase recipient country welfare. To evaluate the size of this potential welfare gain to small African economies we simulate donor policy reforms using a dynamic CGE model where the productivity externality may also interact with private capital accumulation. We show that for reasonable values of key behavioural parameters, the potential growth and welfare gains from a (donor) revenue neutral re-orientation of assistance to developing countries could be substantial. The paper concludes by considering why these potential dynamic gains appear to be unexpoited by both donors and recipients. Keywords: Foreign Aid; Trade Preferences; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2000-19 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC. |
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