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Aid 'dependency': a critique

Aid 'dependency': a critique JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ECONOMIES, VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, PP. 528­545 Aid `Dependency': a Critique Paul Collier1 pcollier@worldbank.org 1. Introduction Just as the `old left' believed that trade between poor and rich economies caused immiserising dependency, so the `new right' currently believes that aid has had this effect. Of course, schools of thought in economic policy are seldom precisely articulated. However, at the risk of caricature, I will state five related propositions which are to be found in current discourse on aid. While the propositions are distinct, they have in common a negative view of aid, and I will term this negative opinion the `aid dependency school'. The first proposition is that Africa has grown more slowly than other continents in part because it has received much more aid relative to GDP than other developing areas. The most noted exponent of this view has been Bauer (1982), who argued that aid reduced the incentive to adopt good policies. The same proposition has more recently been advanced by Ravi Kanbur et al. (1999) but based on a different explanation, namely that large gross flows of project aid overwhelm the management capacity of governments. The second proposition is that the analysis http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of African Economies Oxford University Press

Aid 'dependency': a critique

Collier, P
Journal of African Economies , Volume 8 (4) – Dec 1, 1999
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References (1)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1999
ISSN
0963-8024
eISSN
1464-3723
DOI
10.1093/jae/8.4.528
Publisher site
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Abstract

JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ECONOMIES, VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4, PP. 528­545 Aid `Dependency': a Critique Paul Collier1 pcollier@worldbank.org 1. Introduction Just as the `old left' believed that trade between poor and rich economies caused immiserising dependency, so the `new right' currently believes that aid has had this effect. Of course, schools of thought in economic policy are seldom precisely articulated. However, at the risk of caricature, I will state five related propositions which are to be found in current discourse on aid. While the propositions are distinct, they have in common a negative view of aid, and I will term this negative opinion the `aid dependency school'. The first proposition is that Africa has grown more slowly than other continents in part because it has received much more aid relative to GDP than other developing areas. The most noted exponent of this view has been Bauer (1982), who argued that aid reduced the incentive to adopt good policies. The same proposition has more recently been advanced by Ravi Kanbur et al. (1999) but based on a different explanation, namely that large gross flows of project aid overwhelm the management capacity of governments. The second proposition is that the analysis

Journal

Journal of African Economies – Oxford University Press

Published: Dec 1, 1999

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