Foreign Aid, Law Reform, and the World Bank’s Doing Business Project
-
Jason Webb Yackee
Abstract
Prominent socio-legal scholars have criticized the World Bank’s Doing Business Project on the grounds that development aid donors improperly condition aid on compliance with Doing Business norms. This paper provides the first empirical test of that thesis. I examine nearly a decade of development assistance to analyze whether developing countries that implement more Doing Business reforms indeed tend to receive more development aid. I find mixed support for the conditionality thesis. While aid from multilateral organizations and from the World Bank’s International Development Assistance (IDA) program are correlated with reform efforts, total aid, as well as aid from rich countries, is not.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments.
Appendix
Descriptive statistics for Table 1 models.
| “(a)” Models | “(b)” Models | |
| Mean/Stdev/Min/Max | Mean/Stdev/Min/Max | |
| Log Total ODA (Model 1) | 8.43/1.01/6.03/11.16 | 8.65/.99/6.03/10.36 |
| Log G7 ODA (Model 2) | 7.45/1.24/4.34/11.02102 | 7.67/1.21/4.97/10.00 |
| Log U.S. ODA (Model 3) | 6.06/1.75/.36/10.45 | 6.09/1.80/.36/8.68 |
| Log Multilateral ODA Grants (Model 4) | 7.29/1.09/5.15/9.41 | 7.70/1.01/5.15/9.41 |
| Log IDA ODA (Model 5) | 5.40/2.49/0/8.83 | 6.22/1.76/0/8.83 |
| Reforms (Model 1) | 14.41/7.42/1/37 | 13.35/6.45/2/35 |
| Log GDPPC (Model 1) | 6.87/.88/5.01/8.31 | 6.21/.49/5.01/6.95 |
| Log Population (Model 1) | 16.23/1.59/13.09/21.01 | 16.34/1.48/13.14/20.89 |
| Democracy (Model 1) | 12.22/5.42/1/20 | 11.96/4.85/1/19 |
| Corruption (Model 1) | −0.66/.43/–1.43/.75 | −0.78/.37/–1.37/.05 |
| U.S. Alliance (Model 1) | 0.17/0.38/0/1 | 0.06/0.24/0/1 |
Fitted values versus residuals, Table 1 Model 1(a) (Log Total ODA).
Fitted values versus residuals, Table 1 Model 5(b) (Log IDA ODA).
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©2016 Law and Development Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Access and Investment in the ICT Sector for Developing Countries
- Governing Mining Resources in the History of Colombia: Between Official Institutions and Resistance
- Overcoming the Development Deficit of Article XXIV: Promoting Equality through North-South RTAs
- Law and Innovation Policies: An Analysis of the Mismatch between Innovation Public Policies and Their Results in Brazil
- The Odd Couple: Uniting Climate Change Mitigation and Sustainable Development under the Clean Development Mechanism
- Foreign Aid, Law Reform, and the World Bank’s Doing Business Project
- An Examination of the Good Governance Legal Framework of Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act 2007
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Access and Investment in the ICT Sector for Developing Countries
- Governing Mining Resources in the History of Colombia: Between Official Institutions and Resistance
- Overcoming the Development Deficit of Article XXIV: Promoting Equality through North-South RTAs
- Law and Innovation Policies: An Analysis of the Mismatch between Innovation Public Policies and Their Results in Brazil
- The Odd Couple: Uniting Climate Change Mitigation and Sustainable Development under the Clean Development Mechanism
- Foreign Aid, Law Reform, and the World Bank’s Doing Business Project
- An Examination of the Good Governance Legal Framework of Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act 2007
