Does Aid Spur Economic Growth?

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Musa Talba JIBIR ◽  
Salamatu Idris ISAH ◽  
Bello A. IBRAHIM

<p>Development Assistance is based on the idea that Rich Countries can and should help Poor countries to find the path to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction—especially those that lack sources of capital. The paper began by reviewing the various sources and composition of net capital flows to developing countries and examined the respective roles of private and public flows in social program it further discussed the arguments and evidence on both sides of the question of whether aid is effective in promoting economic growth. The evidence of a direct effect on growth is inconclusive. Does this mean that aid should be cut back? Not necessarily. The impact of Aid should be evaluated not only in relation to its direct effects, but also in terms of its role in improving governance and economic management, and its contribution to social amenities such as basic education, health care facilities and access, water and infant mortality.</p>

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Ali Maalej ◽  
Alexandre Cabagnols

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth, final consumption, investment, energy use and CO² emissions in two groups of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries: Oil Poor Countries (OPC) and Oil Rich Countries (ORC). It is assumed and verified that the structural relationship between GDP growth, energy use and CO² emissions is different in these two groups of countries. FGLS panel estimations were carried out over the period 1974–2014. In ORC, no significant relationships are observed between energy use and GDP, whereas CO² emissions and GDP are positively linked. In OPC, there are opposite connections: a positive link between GDP and energy use, whereas the impact of CO² emissions on GDP tends to be negative. In both groups of countries, a positive and bi-directional link is observed between energy use and CO² emissions. The strength of this link is twice bigger in OPC than in ORC. This indicates that CO2 reduction policies conducted through energy use control (quantitative and qualitative) will have higher effect in OPC than in ORC. This also shows that the relationships between economic growth, energy use and CO² emissions differ noticeably and structurally between OPC and ORC. These results provide new insights into the opportunities and threats faced by CO2 reduction policies in OPCs and ORCs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-229
Author(s):  
Lich Hoang ◽  
Cao Tan ◽  
Le My ◽  
Dung Nguyen

This paper examines the impact of taxes on the economic growth based on classifying countries by GDP per capita and a tax burden. The Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) technique is used because it is not too sensitive to outliers. Through this multicriteria classification technique, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) is employed to analyze the data of the three groups consisting of 63 countries from 2003 to 2017. The results show that most taxes have a positive impact on economic growth in poor countries (Group 1). Interestingly, taxes on goods and services promote economic growth in rich countries (Group 3), rather than having a negative effect, as is concluded by some previous studies. Specially, while the property tax has a negative effect on economic growth in rich countries, its impact is significantly positive in poor countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Nasim Shah Shirazi ◽  
Sajid Amin Javed ◽  
Dawood Ashraf

This paper investigates the impact of remittance inflows on economic growth and poverty reduction for seven African countries using annual data from 1992-2010. By using the depth of hunger as a proxy for poverty in a Simultaneous Equation Model (SEM), we find that remittances have statistically significant growth enhancing and poverty reducing impact. Drawing on our estimates, we conclude that financial development level significantly increases the remittances inflows and strengthens poverty alleviating impact of remittances. Results of our study further show a signficant interactive imapct of remittances and finacial develpment on economic growth, suggesting the substitutability between remittance inflows and financial development. We further find that 3 percentage point increase in credit provision to the private sector (financial development) can help eliminate the severe depth of hunger in the region. Remittances, serving an alternative source of private credit, can be effective in this regard. Keywords: Remittance Inflow, Poverty Alleviation, Financial Development, Simultaneous Equation Model


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Ljubivoje Radonjić ◽  
◽  
Nevena Veselinović ◽  

The primary objective of the article is to examine the nexus between inflation, R&D, patents, and economic growth within a group of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). The examination is conducted in two parts. First, the impact of total R&D expenditures on economic growth is observed, as well as the influence of growth on private and public R&D investments. Second, the conversion from private and public R&D investment to innovation, measured by the number of patents, is observed. Throughout the analysis, economic growth and inflation are representative of macroeconomic stability. The outcomes of the panel auto-regressive distributed lag estimation indicate that total R&D expenditures are essential and positively significant for economic growth in the observed countries. The results also show that output growth has a remarkably positive impact on generating private R&D expenditures. Such an influence is also found, but at a weaker level, in the case of public R&D expenditures. In this part of the analysis, inflation has demonstrated a harmful influence on R&D expenditures. The results of the second part indicate that public and private R&D expenditures, at a significant level, generate innovation activities, while the impact of inflation has proven to be unimportant.


Author(s):  
Lucy Anning ◽  
Collins Frimpong Ofori ◽  
Ernest Kwame Affum

In this study we investigate the impact of government debt on the economic growth of Ghana adopting the methodology of the simple Ordinary Least Squares with data spanning from 1990 to 2015. Ghana has unfortunately found itself in the tragic situation of high external government debt which has led to high dependency on aid and other loans to support its development. These aids and loans have seen the debt of Ghana rise steadily over the years. As a result of the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) which was presented by the IMF and World Bank in 1999, Ghana was judged to be a HIPC with unsustainable debt enabling the country to benefit from debt relief. We investigate the impact of government debt (both external and domestic) by testing three related models at the domestic and external levels including the general growth of the Ghanaian economy. In constructing our dataset, we build on the study of many scholars including a substantial amount of new materials from both primary and secondary data sources being Ministry of Finance (MOF) or Treasury Latest actual data: Government Finance Statistics Manual (GFSM), Ghana and World Bank. The research findings revealed that there is a negative relationship between debt (domestic and external) and growth in the economy of Ghana and recommend among others that government debt borrowing should be discouraged while increasing the revenue base through tax reform programs is encouraged.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-41
Author(s):  
Bao Nguyen Hoang

Although Vietnam’s economic growth and poverty reduction for almost three decades have been remarkable, growth for poverty reduction is unequally distributed across the nation. The paper examines the cause of poverty and the impact of provincial economic growth on poverty alleviation, using the data of 63 provinces in Vietnam. The elasticity of poverty with respect to provincial economic growth is employed (the elasticities of headcount index, poverty gap index, and squared poverty index with respect to provincial economic growth) to identify the provinces where pro-poor growth has occurred. The elasticity of poverty with respect to provincial Gini coefficient is examined to identify the impact of expenditure inequality on poverty. The simultaneous equation system is estimated to analyze not only direct and indirect effects of the related variables, but also the causality effect between economic growth and the poverty elasticity with respect to both growth and the Gini coefficient.


2021 ◽  
pp. 172-190
Author(s):  
Francis Teal

While all the evidence we have points to the rising living standards for most of the very poorest, the wages of unskilled labour in poor countries remain a fraction of those in rich countries. Those potential workers are seen as a threat to the living standards of the unskilled in rich countries and the political impetus to limit their access to those labour markets has been, and remains, one of the most potent issue in the politics of rich countries. This aversion to immigration as a threat to the wages of the unskilled often transmutes into a hostility to trade, as goods, which use a lot of unskilled labour, can be imported more cheaply. Both immigration and trade are seen as a threat to the unskilled. Two dimensions of this threat are examined in this chapter—the impact of Chinese exports on wages in the US and the impact of immigration on the UK economy.


Author(s):  
K. L. Datta

Describing the manner in which poverty is incorporated as a parameter in planning, this chapter delineates the use of poverty estimates in policy-making, and in tracking progress of development over time and space. It dwells on the methodological issues related to measurement of poverty, and identification of poor households, comprehensively summarizing the debates surrounding it. Viewing the pace of poverty reduction as the ultimate test of planning, it quantifies the level and change in poverty since the 1970s. It analyses the state of poverty at national and state level, and assesses the impact of economic growth and income redistributive measures on poverty reduction. It brings out that the phenomenal decline in poverty in the reforms-era took place exclusively due to increase in income, eventuated by high rate of economic growth. Finally, it states that despite the decline, poverty remains a major concern.


Author(s):  
Shereen Nosier ◽  
Aya El-Karamani

This paper examines the indirect effect of democracy on economic growth using a dataset of 17 MENA countries from 1990 to 2015. Democracy is assumed to affect growth through a series of channels: education, health, physical capital accumulation per labor, government consumption, and trade openness. A system of six simultaneous equations, 3SLS, is used to estimate the effect of democracy on growth through these channels. For further analysis, the countries are classified into groups according to the democratic status on the one side, and the level of income on the other. The results indicate that democracy enhances growth through its positive effect on health in all classifications of countries within the MENA region. However, the effect of democracy on growth through education and physical capital/labor is non-monotonic. Democracy always hinders growth through government size and trade openness. Once all of these indirect effects are accounted for, the overall effect of democracy on growth is negative in less democratic countries and poor countries, but positive in more democratic countries and rich countries.


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