Authors
Publication Date
DOI
10.1257/pol.20180582
JEL Classification
D72
F35
H87
O17
O19
Key Words
Related Topics
Welfare State
Emerging Markets & Developing Countries
Almost half of the world's states provide bilateral development assistance. While previous research takes the set of donor countries as exogenous, this article introduces a new dataset on aid giving covering all countries in the world, both rich and poor, and explores the determinants of aid donorship. It argues and shows empirically that democratic institutions support the setup of an aid program in richer countries but undermine its establishment in poorer countries. The findings hold in instrumental-variable regressions and the pattern is similar for the amount of aid.
