Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/39948 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Frankfurt a.M. 2009 No. 24
Publisher: 
Verein für Socialpolitik, Ausschuss für Entwicklungsländer, Göttingen
Abstract: 
The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor's choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted transfers may be used, among others, to control a recipient's moral hazard behavior but may be associated with deadweight losses. Within the context of foreign aid, we use a canonical political agency model to construct a simple signaling game between a possibly corrupt politician in a recipient country and a donor to illustrate the donor's optimal choice of tied (restricted) and untied foreign aid. We clarify the condition under which a reduction in the recipient's moral hazard behavior (i.e., improvement in the level of governance) leads to a fall in the proportion of tied aid. We test the predictions of our theoretical analysis using data on the composition of foreign aid by multilateral and bilateral donors.
Subjects: 
Moral Hazard
Foreign Aid
Panel Data
JEL: 
D73
F35
H87
I38
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

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