Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts

Joergen Juel Andersen, Niels Johannesen and Bob Rijkers
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Joergen Juel Andersen: BI Norwegian Business School

No 20-07, CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)

Abstract: Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5% at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.

Keywords: foreign aid; corruption; offshore financial centers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 F35 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2020-03-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-dev and nep-gen
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_WP_07-20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2022)
Working Paper: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2020)
Working Paper: Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kucebi:2007

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