Suchergebnisse

Do bilateral and multilateral foreign aid donors target poverty? To answer that question, we present a framework for assessing the quality of aid targeting sub-nationally. If donors cluster aid in areas with concentrated poverty, or spread out aid in areas of diffuse poverty, then we conclude that donors are targeting aid well. Furthermore, because co-financing may be a mechanism that improves coordination and information-sharing among donors, we examine whether the frequency of donor co-financing increases the quality of aid targeting. Recently released sub-national georeferenced foreign aid data for all bilateral and multilateral donors are available in five sub-Saharan African countries, making it possible to map the placement of foreign aid along with sub-national poverty levels. Results indicate that foreign donors target poverty in some countries but not others, and higher co-financing is associated with lower quality targeting across all cases.

Third parties intervene in ongoing civil wars frequently and at times with nefarious intentions. In this paper, we consider the possibility that lootable natural resources motivate third parties to intervene in wars on the side of the opposition. Such resources offer a host of benefits to the intervener, including resource extraction and greater likelihood of rebel success. When rebels have access to lootable resources, we hypothesize that third parties will be more likely to intervene on the side of the rebels and simultaneously less likely to intervene on behalf of the government. Rare-events logit and split population (mixture-cure) survival models, in conjunction with close attention to the mechanisms found in individual cases, offer support for the theoretical argument. This paper advances our understanding of the motivations for intervention into civil war by highlighting the largely neglected role of economic factors in motivating opposition-biased interventions. It further adds insights into the role of natural resources in civil wars by shifting emphasis away from domestic combatants towards the motives of outside states.