Losing Concentration? Lessons from a Swedish Aid Policy Reform

Rune Hagen

No 13/17, Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics

Abstract: Sweden is one of the donor countries that signed on to the Paris Agenda, which amongst other things advocated reducing aid dispersion. It also adopted its own geographical concentration policy in 2007. My empirical analysis shows that Sweden only managed to achieve this goal for two years following the reform and that the episode was followed by backsliding. Moreover, its current aid policy framework barely mentions the topic. I argue that a major reason was the failure to institutionalise the policy. This left it vulnerable to the regular politics of aid, which tend to generate both geographic and thematic spread. Reduced peer pressure as the international community has moved away from the Paris Agenda might also have contributed.

Keywords: Foreign aid; Paris Agenda; aid dispersion; Theil Index; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 F53 H87 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2017-09-29
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Journal Article: Losing concentration? Lessons from a Swedish aid policy reform (2018)
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