Financing growth: foreign aid vs. foreign loans

Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Sajal Lahiri and Javed Younas ()

No 2013-031, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: Compared to foreign grants, do concessional loans from foreign governments and/or unsubsidized loans from foreign private banks lead to faster growth in developing nations? The answer has implications for aid agencies (i) in allocating a given amount of resources between grants and concessional loans; and (ii) in encouraging financial market reforms. We examine the effects of ODA grants, concessional ODA loans, and private offshore bank loans on growth rates of 131 developing nations over 1996-2010 in a unified way. We find evidence of non-linearities in all three relationships, suggesting that at low (high) levels grants are better (worse) than loans (concessional or private).

Keywords: Foreign aid program; Loans, Foreign (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2013/2013-031.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:fip:fedlwp:2013-031

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

DOI: 10.20955/wp.2013.031

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().