Promises kept, promises broken? The relationship between aid commitments and disbursements

Abstract

We use an updated form of an old database to examine aid predictability, i.e. the relationship between commitments and disbursements. In contrast to the existing literature, the regression results suggest that on average almost all commitments tend to be met within two years, with the overwhelming majority met immediately. But the situation is different with respect to individual sectors. Some such as infrastructure have very long lags. For some sectors too it seems likely that commitments will never be fully met. Debt aid, however, tends to be disbursed in full almost immediately. There are also substantial differences between countries.