IMPERFECT ENFORCEMENT, FOREIGN INVESTMENT, AND FOREIGN AID

Aid and Foreign Direct Investment in Vietnam

This short paper explores the complementarity between foreign aid and foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent studies on aid concluded that aid should come to an end or be reduced with a radical modification of the terms and conditions and FDI and trade should replace aid as the engine of development. In this paper, we argue that aid complements FDI and advances the efficacy of FDI in promoting...

Foreign Aid, Incentives and Efficiency: Can Foreign Aid Lead to Efficient Level of Investment?

This paper develops a two-period-two-country model in which an altruistic donor faces Samaritan’s Dilemma to address two important policy questions: (i) whether foreign aid can lead to efficient level of capital investment in the recipient country and (ii) how do the form (e.g. budgetary transfers, capital transfer) and the timing of aid affect the incentives of the recipient? It finds that the...

Who Benefits? the Effects of Foreign Aid and Foreign Direct Investment on Human Rights

Can Foreign Aid Buy Investment? Appropriation Through Conflict∗

The failure of foreign aid to promote growth in the developing world has received significant attention as evidence suggests that foreign aid does not translate into investment. This research has demonstrated that poor institutions in these developing economies (particularly with respect to property rights) results in an inability to fully appropriate the return to one’s investment, thereby ser...

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...