Africa: Is Aid an Answer?
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Elizabeth M Caucutt
We address the poverty trap rationale for aid to Africa. We calibrate models that embody typical explanations for stagnation: coordination failures, ineffective mix of occupational choices and imperfect capital markets, and insufficient human capital accumulation coupled with high fertility. Calibration is ideally suited for this evaluation given the paucity of high-quality data, the high degree of model nonlinearity, and the need for conducting counterfactual policy experiments. We find that calibrations that yield multiple equilibria -- one being prosperity and the other stagnation -- are not particularly robust in capturing the African situation. This tempers optimism about foreign aid typically prescribed based on models of multiplicity. Moreover, conditional on multiplicity, the calibrated models indicate that the cost of policy interventions needed to trigger development in stagnant economies is small. The lack of reforms in Africa, despite the low estimated costs, suggests political hurdles to reform. It is not clear that foreign aid would be able to circumvent these. Taken together, we conclude that the case for foreign aid to Africa is weak.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Topics Article
- The Importance of Industrial Policy in Quality-Ladder Growth Models
- The Evolution of International Output Differences (1970-2000): From Factors to Productivity
- Non-Linearities and Unit Roots in G7 Macroeconomic Variables
- Mitigating the Growth-Effects of Inflation through Financial Development
- The Dynamics of European Inflation Expectations
- Target Saving in an Overlapping Generations Model
- Inequality, Volatility and Labour Market Efficiency
- Expected Equity Returns and the Demand for Money
- Forecasting with DSGE Models: The Role of Nonlinearities
- Job Reallocation, Unemployment and Hours in a New Keynesian Model
- Consolidation of Student Loan Repayments and Default Incentives
- Advent of Industrial Mass Production: Three Stages of Economic Development
- The Japanese Depression in the Interwar Period: A General Equilibrium Analysis
- Determinants of Bilateral Remittance Flows
- Cyclical Behavior of Unemployment and Job Vacancies: A Comparison between Canada and the United States
- Economic and Socio-Political Determinants of de Facto Monetary Institutions and Inflationary Outcomes
- On Equilibrium Determinacy in New Keynesian Models with Staggered Wage and Price Setting
- Contributions Article
- Growth-Led Exports: Implications for the Cross-Country Effects of Shocks to Potential Output
- Monetary Policy and Fiscal Rules
- Choosing Longevity with Overlapping Generations: To Be or Not to Be in Diamond's Model
- Nonlinear Taylor Rules and Asymmetric Preferences in Central Banking: Evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States
- Baumol's Diseases: A Macroeconomic Perspective
- Employment Growth in the American Urban Hierarchy: Long Live Distance
- Endogenous Persistence and the Performance of Inertial Targeting Rules
- Unemployment, Imperfect Risk Sharing, and the Monetary Business Cycle
- Technological Progress and the Urbanization Process
- Convergence by Parts
- Estimating Returns to Schooling from State-Level Data: A Macro-Mincerian Approach
- Great Moderation(s) and US Interest Rates: Unconditional Evidence
- Advances Article
- Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in the OECD
- Monetary Policy under Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity
- Africa: Is Aid an Answer?
