How Information about Foreign Aid Affects Public Spending Decisions: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Malawi

Brigitte Seim, Ryan S. Jablonski, Johan Ahlbäck
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引用次数: 9

Abstract

Abstract Does foreign aid shift public spending? Many worry that aid will be “fungible” in the sense that governments reallocate public funds in response to aid. If so, this could undermine development, increase the poorest's dependency on donors, and free resources for patronage. Yet, there is little agreement about the scale or consequences of such effects. We conducted an experiment with 460 elected politicians in Malawi. We provided information about foreign aid projects in local schools to these politicians. Afterwards, politicians made real decisions about which schools to target with development goods. Politicians who received the aid information treatment were 18% less likely to target schools with existing aid. These effects increase to 22–29% when the information was plausibly novel. We find little evidence that aid information heightens targeting of political supporters or family members, or dampens support to the neediest. Instead the evidence indicates politicians allocate the development goods in line with equity concerns.
外援信息如何影响公共支出决策:来自马拉维实地实验的证据
外援是否会改变公共支出?许多人担心,援助将是“可替代的”,因为政府会根据援助重新分配公共资金。如果是这样,这可能会破坏发展,增加最贫穷国家对捐助者的依赖,并将资源无偿提供给赞助者。然而,对于这种影响的规模或后果,几乎没有达成一致意见。我们在马拉维对460名民选政客进行了实验。我们向这些政客提供了当地学校的外援项目信息。之后,政治家们就向哪些学校提供发展产品做出了真正的决定。接受过援助信息处理的政客将目标对准现有援助学校的可能性降低了18%。当信息看似新颖时,这种影响增加到22-29%。我们发现很少有证据表明,援助信息加剧了针对政治支持者或家庭成员的攻击,或削弱了对最需要帮助的人的支持。相反,有证据表明,政客们是根据公平考虑来分配发展产品的。
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