Working Paper
Aid and social cohesion
A plethora of work has been done on the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, virtually none of the previous studies has investigated the impact of aid on social cohesion. Yet, in order to promote the achievement of the targets in SDG 16, donors and...
Working Paper
Does aid support democracy?
This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most...
Blog
Foreign aid can help stem the decline of democracy, if used in the right way
by
Rachel M. Gisselquist, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa
April 2021
Democracy is having a hard time. In India, once the world’s largest democracy, the pandemic has hastened the country’s slide toward authoritarianism...
Book Chapter
Foreign aid and peacebuilding
Foreign aid is a core component of peacebuilding and among the largest external financial flows to fragile states and conflict-affected areas. Nevertheless, troubling critiques have been raised about its overall impact and effectiveness. Some of the...
Working Paper
Aid targeting to fragile and conflict-affected states and implications for aid effectiveness
While significant amounts of foreign aid have been allocated to the group of so-called fragile and conflict-affected states in recent years, it is not clear whether that aid is targeted to where it is most needed. This paper extends recent work by...
Working Paper
The impact of foreign aid on maternal mortality
In 2010, the G8 placed renewed focus on maternal health via the Muskoka Initiative by committing to spend an additional US$5 billion on maternal, newborn, and child health before 2015. Following the end of the Millennium Development Goals and the...
Working Paper
Do countries use foreign aid to buy geopolitical influence?
In recent years, donor countries have increasingly used different aid allocation channels to boost aid effectiveness. One delivery channel that has grown tremendously is ‘multi-bi aid’—contributions to multilateral organizations earmarked for...
Working Paper
Effects of foreign aid on income through international trade
This paper presents a review of recent studies that estimate the trade effects of foreign aid. It also provides new results obtained using panel data techniques to estimate the direct effects of aid on international trade, accounting for countries’...
Working Paper
Too many cooks in the kitchen?
The total funding envelope for World Bank projects is often divided among various state and non-state actors, each of which can have competing ideas about or interests in the project. How does the division of financing relate to overall project...
Blog
The vital role of aid in development
by
Rachel M. Gisselquist,
Sam Jones
June 2019
The UNU-WIDER research programme on foreign aid (ReCom) began in 2010, in a period of strong aid scepticism. Dambisa Moyo’s well-known book, Dead Aid...
Blog
Aid fungibility, ownership and the effectiveness agenda
by
Zunera Rana
June 2023
For many people, aid fungibility is a misunderstood topic—it is mostly confused with the idea of corruption. Aid fungibility, on the other hand, is...
Blog
Development programmes must capture local insights
by
Ana Horigoshi, Samantha Custer
June 2023
In the paper 'Aid reimagined: results from an elite survey on perceptions of progress, capacity, and development co-operation', we tabulated responses...
Working Paper
Unravelling aid funding
Development assistance funding by international donors is rarely channelled to/through local actors. While there are strong normative and practical arguments for localizing funding, progress has been piecemeal as donors are largely left to their own...
Journal Article
Do the principles of effective development co-operation improve development outcomes?
Elaborated in their current form in Busan in 2011, and reiterated in Geneva in 2022, the four Principles of Effective Development Co-operation comprise country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency and mutual...
Blog
Unpacking 'country ownership': four messages from the field
by
Debapriya Bhattacharya, Towfiqul Islam Khan, Najeeba Mohammed Altaf
2023 November
The new and improved Global Partnership monitoring framework for effective development co-operation, launched in 2022, is now fully in motion, with...
Working Paper
Aid’s impact on social protection in low- and middle-income countries
This study conducts an international comparative analysis of the recent evolution of social protection systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, paying particular attention to the...
Journal Special Issue
Macroeconomic Perspectives on Aid
Much criticism of aid rests on no evidence at all, on out-of-date studies (many of which are methodologically weak) or on a misunderstanding of causation and country context. Many critics correlate weak or negative growth with aid flows, without much...
Working Paper
The donor footprint and gender gaps
In this paper we analyse the impact of foreign aid on gender outcomes and attitudes. We do this by matching geocoded household surveys with aid projects. This offers a middle way between project evaluations and aggregated cross-country comparisons...
Journal Special Issue
UNU-WIDER Special Symposium on Aid, Environment and Climate Change
This special section on aid and institutions discusses how they constitute an important element of the global response to interlinked global developmental and environmental challenges. As such, these institutions are now being drawn into new arenas...
Book
Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at www.tandfebooks.com and offered as a free PDF download from Taylor & Francis Group and selected open access locations. Development assistance...
Book
Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability
This collection examines the role that foreign aid can play in dealing with the severe global challenge of climate change, one of the most pressing international development issues of the 21st century. Addressing the key threats of rising...