Donors and domestic politics: Political influences on foreign aid effort

The vast majority of scholarship on foreign aid looks at either the effectiveness of foreign aid or why particular countries receive aid from particular donors. This paper takes a different approach: what are the domestic sources of support for foreign aid? Specifically, how does the donor's domestic political and economic environment influence ‘aid effort’? This paper uses a time-series cross-sectional data set to analyze the influence of changes in political and economic variables. As governments become more conservative, their aid effort is likely to fall. Domestic political variables appear to influence aid effort, but only for aid to low income countries and multilaterals while aid effort to middle income countries in unaffected. This suggests that models solely emphasizing donor economic and international strategic interests as determinants of donor aid policy may be mis-specified. These results also suggest sources of aid volatility that might influence recipient growth prospects.     

A NOTE ON TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PUBLIC ABATEMENT, AND WELFARE

This paper extends Haibara (2006) in order to focus on the welfare consequences of a pollution tax and foreign aid financed for public abatement. The main finding is that environmental protection as a result of increasing a pollution tax by the aid recipient increases the optimal value of foreign aid chosen by the donor and reduces that of a tariff chosen by the recipient. This implies that international environmental cooperation is possible between the donor and the recipient.     

Direct transfers between the former Soviet Union central budget and the republics: Past evidence and current implications

This paper examines the magnitude of direct transfers between the former Soviet Union central buget and individual republics. It shows that Kazakhstan and Central Asian republics were primary recipients of large net transfers of funds from the Soviet central budget amounting in some cases to about ten percent of their GNP. On the contrary, Russia was the single largest net donor of funds to the Soviet central budget through more transfers paid to the union budget than received from it, both in rouble terms and as a share of the GNP.With the dissolution of the central budget in November 1991, these transfers were discontinued. This has caused a dent in fiscal budgets and a large negative income shock in recipient republics. To some extent, external saving is suggested as the way to ease up the burden of the loss of income induced by the collapse of the fiscal system and the system of direct transfers within the former Soviet Union.     

Convolution and composition of totally positive random variables in economics

This paper studies a class of multidimensional screening models where different type dimensions can be aggregated into a single-dimensional sufficient statistic. The paper applies results of totally positive functions to show that some critical properties of distributions of asymmetric information parameters, such as increasing hazard rate, monotone likelihood ratio, and single-peakedness are preserved under convolution or composition. Under some general conditions, these invariance results also provide a natural ordering of alternative screening mechanisms. I illustrate how these preservation results provide a unifying framework to interpret several contributions in economic models of adverse selection, moral hazard, and voting.     

A political-economy perspective on social expenditures: corruption and in-kind versus cash transfers

This paper presents a novel political-economy perspective on the composition of social expenditures. We take into account the possibility that institutions are weak, i.e. there is corruption, and analyze how this affects the government’s choice between cash and in-kind transfers. Our results show that the share of in-kind transfers (e.g. basic health care, public housing or food stamps), whose appropriation by corrupt politicians is more easily observed than in the case of cash transfers, increases with corruption. This positive relationship exists, however, only in highly democratic countries. We argue that voters use their political influence in democratic countries to ensure that a higher share of transfers is provided in kind thereby shielding transfers from appropriation by corrupt politicians.     

Cultural values and public policy: The case of international development aid

This paper investigates whether the quantity and character of aggregate expenditures on foreign aid by donor governments are related to the cultural values held by the people of the donor countries. In particular, we study whether any association exists between three measures of donors’ foreign aid expenditures and two dimensions of culture. We find that the shares of national income governments spend on aid, the proportion of total aid provided in the form of grants, and the proportion of aid directed to humanitarian relief are all related in statistically significant and quantitatively important ways to the location of the cultural values of people in the donor countries on two continua, one from “traditional” to “rational” beliefs about social organization and authority, and the other from “survival” to “self-expression” as the focus of individual aspirations. These results contribute to our understanding of the political economy of aid, and to a growing literature on how culture shapes economic policies, institutions, and performance.     

Platform Pricing Structure and Moral Hazard

We study pricing by a two‐sided platform when it faces moral hazard on the sellers' side. In doing so, we introduce an equilibrium notion of platform reputation in an infinite horizon model. We find that with transaction fees only, the platform cannot eliminate the loss of reputation induced by moral hazard. If registration fees can be levied, moral hazard can be overcome. The registration fee determines the participation threshold of sellers and extracts them, whereas (lower) transaction fees provide incentives for good behavior. This provides a motivation for platforms to use registration fees in addition to transaction fees.     

The Dynamics of Humanitarian Aid Decisions

Humanitarian aid can be seen as a political investment motivated by altruism or by economic benefits for the donor. Uncertainty in the returns to this investment may generate hysteresis effects and inertia in aid allocations. I model the allocation decisions of the three largest humanitarian aid donors: the US government, the UK government and the European Commission, finding evidence that allocations depend on both recipient need and donor economic interest. Some donors exhibit more inertia than others, and some are more influenced by the decisions of other donors. Despite being a relatively small donor, the UK is particularly influential.     

REINVENTING FOREIGN AID FOR INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: KUZNETS,PIKETTY AND THE GREAT POLICY REVERSAL

This survey essay reviews close to 200 papers in arguing that in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development, foreign aid should not orient developing countries toward industrialization in the perspective of Kuznets but in the view of Piketty. Abandoning the former's view that inequality will fall with progress in industrialization and placing more emphasis on inequality in foreign aid policy will lead to more sustainable development outcomes. Inter alia: mitigate short‐term poverty, address concerns of burgeoning population growth, train recipient governments on inclusive development, fight corruption and mismanagement and avoid the shortfalls of celebrated Kuznets’ conjectures. We discuss how the essay addresses post‐2015 development challenges and provide foreign aid policy instruments with which discussed objectives can be achieved. In summary, the essay provides useful policy measures to avoid past pitfalls. ‘Output may be growing, and yet the mass of the people may be becoming poorer’ (Lewis). ‘Lewis led all developing countries to water, proverbially speaking, some African countries have so far chosen not to drink’ (Amavilah). Piketty has led all developing countries to the stream again and a challenging policy syndrome of our time is how foreign aid can help them to drink.     

Cash transfers versus jobs programs

This paper uses a microsimulation computer model to compare the work incentive and distributional implications of public service employment programs and direct transfer programs. The simulation findings suggest that a pure direct transfer program would diminish poverty and inequality by somewhat more than an equal cost plan than combined direct transfers with a jobs program. Moreover, the results imply that a redistribution scheme based entirely on direct transfers is at least as effective per dollar of tax expenditure in raising incomes as a combination of direct transfers and jobs. Furthermore, the simulated job and direct transfer combinations were predicted to cause reductions in private sector earnings that are at least as large as those that would result from comparable schemes that relied solely upon direct transfers.     

Optimal financial contracts with hidden effort,unobservable profits and endogenous costs of effort

This paper studies financial contracting in a two-period financing model with double moral hazard, as entrepreneurial effort choices and profits are unobservable and non-verifiable. The optimal financial contract must induce both the high effort level and truthful revelation of profits. The paper further analyses the structure of the optimal contract where the entrepreneur's payoff takes a general functional form that allows for endogenously determined costs of effort. The entrepreneur's performance is influenced by not only extrinsic work motivation factors but also intrinsic factors so that the degree of control imposed by the investor, in the form of end-of-period transfers, affects the entrepreneur's costs of effort. The finding shows that under well-defined conditions, the optimal contract that solves a model with non-verifiable profits also elicits effort, and generally resembles a simple debt contract. The structure of the optimal contract is robust in the general case where the entrepreneur's payoff function is non-linear in transfers.     

失业保险,道德风险与激励机制研究

在简化的Lucas—Prescott（1974）的模型基础上，本文说明了失业保险中失业保险金对搜寻努力存在着负效用，并分别就无失业保险、完全失业保险、不完全失业保险、失业保险金过低等四种情况，分析了道德风险的产生机制以及克服道德风险的激励机制。针对失业保险中的道德风险问题，本文提出了相应的政策建议：失业期内单调下降的失业保险金支付方法，征收失业保险税或奖励再就业，对失业工人的搜寻努力进行监督和惩罚，执行劳动福利计划等。     

动态联盟中防范道德风险的激励模型

本文论述了动态联盟中存在的道德风险问题,介绍了防范道德风险的Tirole模型,并通过在动态联盟中引入第三方系统,建立了一个委托—代理分析框架下的不完全信息动态博弈模型;指出盟员的收入与动态联盟利润具有动态一致性,可以通过由第三方系统(外部委托人)设计一种激励与监督并行的分配政策,来防范道德风险。最后,阐述了动态联盟运作过程中第三方系统的构成。     

Preliminary evidence on the appointment of institutional solutions to franchisor moral hazard—the case of franchisee councils

Besides franchisee opportunistic behavior, franchisor moral hazard is a central concern in franchise chains. Economic literature thus far focused on the sharing of franchisee revenues as an incentive for curbing franchisor malfeasance. In this paper, we ask whether and how the obligations of chains may be enforced through institutional arrangements like franchisee councils. Consistent with expectations, the appointment of a council empirically turned out to be more likely as decision rights—a proxy for the scope of moral hazard—were increasingly allocated to companies' management. We found this relationship to be negatively moderated by the contractual share parameter. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于风险价值评估模型的供应链道德风险分析

企业与供应商合作存在信息不对称的情况,为有效的做出决策,企业根据道德风险的特征确定风险因子,建立价值评估模型,以供应商的历史表现为依据,进行道德风险价值评估,从而决定是与供应商合作,还是考虑采取预警、防范或其它相关措施.通过实例计算分析.说明理论方法的可行性和有效性.     

Effects of foreign aid on the recipient country’s economic growth

We introduce an infinite-horizon endogenous growth framework for studying the effects of foreign aid on the economic growth in a recipient country. Aid is used to partially finance the recipient’s public investment. We point out that the same rule of aid may have very different outcomes, depending on the recipient’s circumstances in terms of development level, domestic investment, efficiency in the use of aid and in public investment, etc. Foreign aid may promote growth in the recipient country, but the global dynamics of equilibrium are complex (because of the non-monotonicity and steady state multiplicity). The economy may converge to a steady state or grow without bounds. Moreover, there are rooms for the divergence and a two-period cycle. We characterize conditions under which each scenario takes place. Our analysis contributes to the debate on the nexus between aid and economic growth and in particular on the conditionality of aid effects.     

USAID,official development assistance and counter terrorism efforts: Pre and post 9/11 analysis for South Asia

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in United States and the subsequent declaration of war on terror have upturned worldwide issues including terrorist attacks, fatalities, disbursement of foreign aid and development assistance. Since 9/11 attacks, US economic and military aids and official development assistance have played a vital role in the South Asian region. Present study is the pioneer to examine the reaction of different types of foreign aid toward counter-terrorism policies. For this purpose, the paper used annual data of studied factors for the period 1991 to 2016 and employed three models as preferred and full specification, pre and post 9/11 analysis and financial crisis analysis. For econometric estimations, the study used quantile regression method, negative binomial regression, system GMM and two stage IV regression techniques with different control variables. Accordingly, the study documented that all types of foreign aid namely; development assistance, economic aid, military aid fuels terrorism in recipient countries, due to institutional problems or ongoing civil conflicts. We also find evidence that military expenditures and media freedom tends to have negative relationship on terrorism.     

Coalition-enhancing fiscal policies in an open economy: A CES framework of Gale’s transfer paradox

The motivation of our paper comes from David Gale’s seminal work in 1974. He constructed an example of the “transfer paradox” based on three Leontief functions. The transfer paradox is that when there is a set of agents in the home country and that the home country is trading with other countries, then certain public lump-sum tax transfer plans could make all agents in the home country better off. Our contributions are as follows. First, we show that such an example can be constructed with three smooth CES utility functions. Second, we establish the three crucial conditions for the existence of the transfer paradox: (1) the donor (a taxpayer) has stronger preference for the foreign good than the recipient; (2) the donor is ex-ante wealthier than the recipient; (3) the elasticity of substitution of the foreign country’s preference is strictly less than one.     

基于博弈论的建设工程项目承包商与监理合谋问题研究

运用多期完全信息动态博弈模型分析建设工程项目中承包商和监理之间的合谋条件及其对承包商道德风险行为的影响。承包商和监理事后合谋可以使承包商不需承担其事前道德风险行为引起的返工成本,从而引发承包商事前的道德风险行为。在此基础上分析监理有限责任对罚款政策有效性的影响,并研究监理资质管理对抑制监理和承包商合谋乃至承包商道德风险的作用机制。