Harper skirts transparency on foreign aid

Harper skirts transparency on foreign aid.

Americans on Foreign Aid and World Hunger

In 1995 PIPA found that, while an overwhelming majority supported aid in principle, a majority wanted to cut it. However when asked to estimate how much of the budget was devoted to foreign aid, respondents vastly overestimated its size, and when asked what would be appropriate they proposed an amount far higher than the actual amount. In this new study PIPA sought to find out how perceptions a...

Foreign aid and taxation, revisited∗

Existing research into the relationship between foreign aid and taxation in recipient countries has both conceptual and econometric failings. Empirical results based upon observed tax revenues conflate the effect of aid upon tax structures with the effect upon flows of taxable economic activity, most notably the level of imports. The use of variables normalized by GDP is also likely to generate...

Foreign Aid and Enlightened Leaders

To study whether foreign aid fuels personal, regional and ethnic favoritism, we use satellite data on nighttime light for any region in any aid-recipient country, and we determine for each year and each country the region in which the current political leader was born. Having a panel with 22,850 regions in 91 aid recipient countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2005, we compare the eff...

Macroeconomic Issues in Foreign Aid

The macroeconomic rationale for aid relates to its ability to supplement savings, foreign exchange and government revenue, thus contributing to growth. This processes presumes a simple Harrod-Domar context in which growth is driven by physical capital formation. However, the macroeconomic reality of aid is more complicated. Three areas of complication are discussed: (i) the effects of aid on fi...