Foreign Aid as a Signal to Investors

Abstract

Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments face unusual incentives to misrepresent information. In these conditions, firms look to signals. One is development aid, because donors tend to give more to countries they trust to properly handle the funds. Our results show that aid seems to draw FDI—however, this is conditional on whether the aid can be considered geostrategically motivated. We also show that this effect decreases as time elapses after the conflict. This suggests that aid’s signaling effect is specific to low-information environments, and helps rule out alternative causal mechanisms linking aid and FDI.

Keywords

aid FDI civil war post-conflict geostrategic aid

Mr. Baker pledged to seek from Congress $1 billion . . . to signal private foreign investors that it is safe to commit their own funds to the Philippines.

— (Friedman, 1989)

Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on the determinants of FDI by explaining how aid is a signal that can attract FDI. Post-conflict situations are relatively information-poor because of the effects of conflict. Before investing in these countries, firms look at a variety of signals. We argue that the decision to send aid to a country signals the donors’ trust of local authorities. What matters is the presence of aid, whether the aid has achieved its intended purpose. This signaling effect of aid has not yet been addressed. We also argue that this impact of development aid is conditional on whether the aid can be viewed as geostrategic or not. Most aid should signal a better environment for FDI, but aid seen as geostrategic could deter investors. Our results provide support for our argument, suggesting that in post-conflict countries, nonstrategic aid attracts FDI.

This topic has important implications for the literatures on FDI and aid. Global FDI flows have increased substantially in recent decades, and scholars have attempted to explain why some countries receive more FDI than others (e.g., Blanton and Blanton 2007; Büthe and Milner 2008). At the same time, a separate body of literature attempts to determine the effects of foreign aid (e.g., Burnside and Dollar 2000; Easterly 2001). Our study shows that there are important unintended consequences of aid. A few recent studies have shown various relationships between aid and FDI (e.g., Asiedu, Jinc, and Nandwa 2009; Kimura and Tod 2010; Selaya and Sunesen 2008), but ours provides a new angle. This study contributes not only to the FDI and aid literatures separately, but in a broader sense by finding connections between them. This research also has substantial normative implications. Our sample, post-conflict countries, is especially deserving of researchers’ attention. Post-conflict countries need to recover from infrastructure damage and other consequences, and are prone to see conflict break out again (Collier 2003)—increasing investors’ concerns about risk (Jensen and Young 2008)—so they are especially worth understanding.

In the next section, we review the literature on determinants of FDI, and the debate about the effects of aid. Then, we discuss the growing literature on the relationship between aid and FDI. In the third section, we present a theory of aid as a signal to investors. We argue that the type of signal should differ depending on whether aid is viewed as geostrategic or not and that the informational effect of aid should vanish as time elapses since the end of the conflict. In the fourth section, we describe our empirical analysis. In the fifth section we present our conclusions.

Literature Review

Determinants of FDI

Much of the research on the determinants of FDI has explored either economic or political factors. Regarding economic factors, there is some consensus regarding host country’s characteristics that affect the profitability of investment and, therefore, encourage FDI in a given country. Market size, development, economic growth, and trade openness are among the most important economic determinants of FDI (Büthe and Milner 2008; Jensen 2006). Regarding political factors, scholars have explored the effects of political regime, institutions, veto players, and international commitments on the decision to invest in a country. For example, FDI is associated with democracy (Jensen 2003, 2006; Li 2006; Li and Resnick 2003), rule of law (Li 2006, 2009), political stability and regime durability (Li and Resnick 2003), and the signing of preferential trade agreements (Büthe and Milner 2008; Manger 2009) and bilateral investment treaties (Desbordes and Vicard 2009; Neumayer and Spess 2005).

Less explored is how information availability affects FDI. Hooper and Kim found that higher opacity tends to reduce capital inflows, but opacity regarding accounting and regulations are associated with more FDI (Hooper and Kim 2007, 36). However, how do investors make decisions about countries where information is relatively scarce? This article presents a theory about how foreign aid can provide information to investors when reliable information is limited.

Consequences of Development Aid

A substantial body of research attempts to determine if foreign aid improves economic growth in developing countries, but the results are mixed. While some single-country studies have shown a positive impact of aid, macro studies have often not offered support (e.g., Boone 1996; Easterly 2001).¹ Some studies have found aid improves growth, but only conditionally upon other factors. For example, Burnside and Dollar (2000) find that aid can lead to growth in countries with good economic policy. However, the results of conditional relationships seem fragile. Roodman (2007) tests the robustness of fourteen conditional models of aid and growth, and finds the results very sensitive to model specification and sample size. Overall, the effects of aid on growth are not clear.²

The aid efficacy studies have generally examined whether development aid has had its intended consequence. A small but growing body of research looks at aid’s unintended consequences. The most prominent line in this area of inquiry explores how aid affects regime type and related characteristics (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2010; Knack 2001, 2004; Morrison 2007, 2009). Other research finds links between aid and the risk of armed conflict (Nielsen et al. 2011) and military spending increases (Collier and Hoeffler 2007).

This article looks at a different unintended consequence of aid: its impact on FDI. FDI offers potential benefits to recipient countries, so if aid can attract FDI, this would suggest an additional possible mechanism linking aid to growth—though indirectly.³ A handful of studies have looked at connections between aid and FDI, although much remains unclear.

The Impact of Development Aid on FDI

In theory, several channels could link foreign aid to increased FDI. Kimura and Tod (2010, 482-83) mention three channels with positive effects on FDI (infrastructure, finance, and vanguard effects) and two with negative effects (rent-seeking and “Dutch disease” effects).⁴ However, the few articles that empirically examine the direct connection between aid and FDI generally find no significant relationship. These studies analyze the impact of aggregate aid (Harms and Lutz 2006; Karakaplan, Neyapti, and Sayek 2005) and distinguish between aid for infrastructure or for noninfrastructure (Kimura and Tod 2010). Among the positive results, Karakaplan, Neyapti, and Sayek (2005) find that aid leads to FDI only in cases of good governance and financial market development. Kimura and Tod find that only Japanese aid for infrastructure seems to promote Japanese FDI (in line with Blaise [2005]). This appears to be a phenomenon unique to Japan, because they do not find this result for any other donor.

Overall, while there are many channels through which aid might encourage FDI, empirical results have not shown much support for these channels. Virtually no studies have found an unconditional relationship between aid and FDI. In this article, we explore a different channel through which aid can contribute to increased FDI signaling. This should be helpful in a particular set of countries: countries that have recently experienced a war in their territory.

Theory: The Informational Effect of Development Aid

Our argument contains several parts. First, investors need information, not only about economic attributes but also about the political environment. Second, when information is not available, investors look to signals. Third, post-conflict environments are especially information-poor, so signals should matter more in post-conflict countries. Finally, aid concession indicates a degree of credibility regarding the recipient government. That is why foreign development aid can be a useful signal for investors (or their agents) looking for information.⁵ Note that aid is only looked to as a signal when other information is scarce or unreliable, such as immediately after a war. This suggests that in post-conflict countries, investment should follow aid, but only until information from other sources becomes available.

Information is a crucial component in the decision to invest in a country (Mody, Sadka, and Razin 2003). However, while the literature has identified a series of determinants of FDI, it assumes that the ability of investors to access information about these factors (e.g., market size or potential, institutions that may affect investments), and the reliability of such information are relatively homogeneous across countries.⁶ This is problematic for two reasons. First, investors do not always have access to all the relevant information that would be desirable before investing in a particular country. Second, potential recipient governments have incentives to offer enticements for investment, but information about the government’s type—its willingness or ability to commit to certain policies—may not be available. How do investors decide whether to take advantage of opportunities without all the relevant information about the country? Recent work in the field of behavioral finance uses psychology to explain investor behavior that cannot be explained with traditional financial and economic theory (Krishnamurti 2009, 628). Furthermore, recent studies show that investors rely on informational shortcuts (Biglaiser, Hicks, and Huggins 2008; Gray 2009).

Post-conflict situations are especially information-poor, even compared to other developing countries. Regarding developing countries generally, investors can access information about the economic and political situation from government sources, the press, international governmental and nongovernmental organizations (IGOs and NGOs), and private sources (i.e., other companies). In post-conflict countries, however, data from official sources can be unreliable because of the consequences of the conflict on the country’s administration (and its ability to gather and report accurate information) or because of possible government’s incentives to misrepresent the data (Collier 1999; Murdoch and Sandler 2002). For these reasons, there should be less information coming from post-conflict governments, and this information should be less reliable than information from other states.

Additionally, a significant part of the information distributed by IGOs comes from governmental sources. Depending on the magnitude of the conflict and the government type, the work of the press and NGOs can be limited. Furthermore, the information gathered by these sources does not necessarily provide the data required for investment decisions. Finally, conflicts are usually associated with FDI withdrawal (Busse and Hefeker 2007), potentially limiting the information provided by established foreign companies. Overall, post-conflict developing countries are especially low-information environments.

In brief, before investing, firms look at a variety of data sources. In post-conflict countries, given the heightened need for financing, sources affiliated with the potential recipient government may not be credible. As a collateral consequence of the conflict, information produced by the private sector about the country or the economic environment is likely to be scarce. Where can investors look for information? We argue that, as in other low-information environments, actors look for signals. A particularly important signal in these countries is foreign aid. In post-conflict situations, the decision to send funds to a country signals the donors’ relative trust of local authorities. This signal indicates investors which countries are trusted to handle international funds and commit to certain policies.

Foreign aid received by a country after a conflict is a useful signal to investors for two reasons. First, foreign aid is an accessible signal. Aid packages are typically announced through the press to a global audience. This makes the signal clear and available to investors independent of the nationality of the donor. Governments not only make public announcements of aid programs (which can regularly be seen in major newspapers),⁷ and they also announce aid denial,⁸ cuts,⁹ and suspensions.¹⁰ Furthermore, the very aid announcements are frequently joined by statements about the trust in the recipient country,¹¹ and sometimes, joined by statements of the intention of giving a signal to other international actors, particularly, investors.¹² The global availability of the signal distinguishes our argument from another informational mechanism: the “vanguard” effect suggests that aid gives private information to investors from the donor country.

Second, aid is a costly signal. Donor states invest resources in determining their aid allocation decisions, and of course aid is expenditure as well. Because aid is costly, it is a better indication of trust in the local authorities than mere declarations. The costliness of the signal, combined with the likely lack of credible alternatives, makes aid an indicator for potential investors.

What is it exactly that aid signals? We argue that aid is a costly signal indicating that the recipient is trusted to handle international funds and to commit to certain policies. Development aid often has attached conditions regarding the use that the recipient should make of the received funds, or commitments to pursue domestic or international policies.¹³ This type of signal is valuable to investors, who seek information about the reliability of the government, yet lack such information in post-conflict environments.

Our assertion thus far is that aid provides a signal that a country is safe to invest in, compared with other post-conflict countries. Here, we add a substantial caveat: in order for aid to work in the manner that we describe, it should not be seen as a strategic enticement in a geopolitical relationship. Geostrategic aid, seen as primarily intended to provide security benefits to the donor (see the following discussion), should not provide such a positive signal. Aid that cannot be considered geostrategic, however, should provide an important signal about trust in local authorities regarding the “acceptable” use of aid. Therefore, in post-conflict countries, non-geostrategic foreign aid should have a positive signaling effect and attract FDI.

Hypothesis 1: In post-conflict situations, non-geostrategic foreign aid is positively associated with FDI.

It could be argued that international aid fosters investment through channels other than information. For example, it is possible that the connection between aid and FDI is through aid’s contribution to economic and social capital (the infrastructure effect; Dollar and Easterly 1999, 573). There are two reasons why this is not necessarily the case. First, as the literature discussed above indicates, it is far from clear that aid regularly has a positive effect on the economy (Doucouliagos and Paldam 2008). Additionally, for aid to affect FDI through aid’s intended effects, investors would have to believe in the efficacy of aid. This is not a given, considering the general level of skepticism of aid in business circles and the media (e.g., Dorn 2004; Mills 2009; Stephens 2010). Second, aid’s informational effect on FDI should be relatively fast, but infrastructure takes longer to actually increase the host country’s economic or social capital, and then attract FDI. According to our argument, in initial years after a conflict, the amount of aid received by the host country should signal some level of confidence in the country. What matters is the presence of aid, whether or not the aid has actually accomplished the goals set forth by donors.

Because the argument emphasizes aid’s informational effect, and not its intended development consequences, we focus on specific types of aid. Our argument is about bilateral aid in particular. Aid is an important signal because it indicates a characterization the donor country has made about the recipient. Multilateral aid responds to different determinants than bilateral aid (e.g., Neumayer 2003a, 2003b), and allocations processes and criteria are different across international organizations. Additionally, there is evidence suggesting that international organizations make aid allocations disregarding the political character of the recipients (Lebovic and Voeten 2009). Therefore, multilateral aid should provide a noisier and less useful signal to investors.

Within bilateral aid, aid from the United States is more likely to be motivated by geostrategic reasons, and therefore we expect it to have different effects than aid provided by other states. The preceding hypothesis applies to non-US aid, and the following discussion explains why we expect US aid to have a different signaling effect to foreign investors.

The Peculiarity of US Aid Flows and the Information they Provide

The United States is seen as a unique aid donor for two primary reasons: First, it donates more than any other country.¹⁴ Second, and more importantly for signaling implications, US aid is seen as especially geostrategic. By geostrategic, we mean motivated by global security concerns. This is different from—and often inconsistent with—economic or other concerns. The goal of US aid in many cases is to get a recipient country to participate in a wartime coalition,¹⁵ allow US troops to use local military facilities,¹⁶ or to help keep a domestically unpopular regime in place—because this regime supports US security policies.¹⁷ These geostrategic goals are relatively unique to the United States, with its hegemonic status and troops deployed to all regions of the world.

A number of studies suggest that US aid during the cold war was based more on geopolitics than development (Boschini and Olofsgard 2007; Meernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998). Security goals continued to shape US aid commitments through the 1990s (Boschini and Olofsgard 2007; Lai 2003). More recently, the “War on Terrorism” has seemed to influence aid provision in ways comparable to those of the Cold War (Buzan 2006; Fleck and Kilby 2010). While there are multiple mechanisms for how US aid is specifically used for geopolitical ends, several studies suggest vote-buying at the United Nations.¹⁸ Kuziemko and Werker (2006) argue that US aid is used for “bribery” at the Security Council and find that, between 1946 and 2001, countries rotating into nonpermanent Council seats received, on average, a 59 percent increase in US aid. Regarding the UN General Assembly, Dreher, Nunnenkamp, and Thiele (2008) find that US development aid “buys voting compliance” in the body. Interestingly, when the authors test the influence of other major donors on voting patterns, they find no comparable results. The prominence of US aid, and its consistent status as a geopolitical instrument, means that investors can look to this aid as a signal regarding investment potential.

The assumption that US aid is generally more geostrategic than aid from other countries does not imply that non-US aid is altruistic. Some development aid might be motivated by humanitarian concerns (Lumsdaine 1993), but research shows that a great deal of aid is motivated by donors’ interests (e.g., Alesina and Dollar 2000; Berthélemy 2006; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2007, 2009).¹⁹ However, geostrategic interest is different from simple economic interest in that aid given for the former reason is designed to ensure that the regime follows certain security policies, and possibly also to ensure that the regime can stay in power—because of shared security interests. These goals, as opposed to the goals associated with economically motivated aid, are less likely to be in line with the interests of investors.

We argue that the signaling effect of US aid, because of its geostrategic nature, should have the opposite impact of the non-geostrategic aid. Because US aid is based on factors other than potential for economic development or simply need, investors might disregard US aid, or even avoid countries receiving higher levels of US aid. US aid might not only indicate a lack of promise of development but instead a greater likelihood of instability. The very presence of US interest in a country might suggest a concern about volatility. This is illustrated by the frequent US practice of supporting leaders who are unpopular in their own countries, such as the Somozas in Nicaragua, the shah in Iran, and Musharraf in Pakistan. Aid in these cases might offer some stability, but does not address the underlying issues that provoked US concern in the first place. Therefore, investors might see US aid as a warning sign, and avoid countries that receive higher levels of US aid.

Hypothesis 2: In post-conflict situations, US foreign aid is negatively associated with FDI.

Corollary: The Effect of Time on the Signaling Effect

There is an interesting implication of aid’s informational role in post-conflict situations. We argue that because of the particular characteristics of a post-conflict country, access to information is more problematic right after the end of the conflict. Lacking relevant information, particularly about the government’s credibility, investors will look at aid as a signal of international actors’ trust or support of the country. This informational effect of aid, however, should fade as time elapses after the conflict. This is consistent with our main argument because we do not posit that aid has a permanent informational role, but that aid assumes that role in a particular context: after a conflict. Therefore, the impact of aid on FDI is the most potent in the years immediately after the war, and diminishes with time.

Hypothesis 3: In post-conflict situations, the impact of aid on FDI decreases over time.

Empirical Analysis

The dependent variable is FDI. This variable measures the country’s net inflows of FDI for the year, as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP). Dividing FDI by GDP is fairly standard in the literature, to scale the amount of FDI by the size of the market (e.g., Blanton and Blanton 2007; Büthe and Milner 2008; Jensen 2004; Jensen and McGillivray 2005). We use aggregate FDI flows because our theory does not suggest different effects for different kinds of FDI. All of the economic variables come from the World Bank (2010), except where indicated otherwise.

One primary independent variable is Total aid. This variable measures the net inflows of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) aid received by the country that year, as a percentage of the host country’s GDP. Results are largely unchanged if we use data from AidData (Tierney et al. 2011).²⁰ We use the same data source and scaling method to create a variable measuring the amount of aid the country gets from the United States (US aid), and another variable that measures the amount it gets from countries other than the United States (Non-US aid).

A number of factors have been shown to be associated with FDI levels. The literature shows a series of economic factors capture aspects of the developing country that might make it more or less attractive to foreign investors. We measure Market size as the natural logarithm of the country’s population (e.g., Büthe and Milner 2008; Neumayer and Spess 2005).

Economic development is measured using GDP per capita in thousands of 2,000 US dollars. Countries with more wealthy citizens should be seen as better markets with better infrastructure (e.g., Jensen 2004; Tsai 1994). GDP growth is the percentage of change in the country’s GDP in the previous year (Blanton and Blanton 2007; Li and Resnick 2003). Trade openness is a country’s exports plus imports over GDP (e.g., Asiedu 2002; Büthe and Milner 2008; Jensen 2004). Finally, we include a control for prewar FDI, measured as FDI/GDP the year before the conflict initiated.

We include the following political determinants. Political instability is a count of the number of disturbances such as riots, strikes, antigovernment demonstrations, or assassinations in a country in a given year (Banks 2011). Instability should make foreign firms less likely to invest in a country, although evidence of this is mixed (Asiedu 2006; Büthe and Milner 2008; Feng 2001). Democracy is the 1–7 scale from Freedom House (2009), reversed so that 0 indicates the least-free category and 6 indicates the most-free category. Empirical results have been mixed for regime type (Jensen 2006; Li and Resnick 2003).

In addition to economic and political attributes of the recipient country, we take other factors into consideration. It is possible that the intensity of the conflict affects the decision of investing in a post-conflict country. Therefore, we include Conflict intensity, which indicates the number of deaths in the conflict. We use the conflict duration in months as an alternative measure.²¹ We also include a series of temporal controls. Cold war is coded 1 for years before 1990. We also include decade dummies and Year count, a variable counting the years that have elapsed since the conflict ended. All independent variables except the temporal controls are lagged one year to avoid reverse causality.

Models are run on a sample of post-conflict developing countries between 1973 and 2008. Developing countries are defined as countries that are not OECD members. Post-conflict countries are defined as countries that have experienced a civil conflict or interstate war on their own territory²² within the previous five years. Civil conflict is defined as an incompatibility between a state and a substate group over territory or the government that results in at least twenty-five battle-related deaths in a single year.²³Civil conflict data come from the Armed Conflict Dataset (Gleditsch et al. 2002). Interstate war is a conflict between two or more states that results in 1,000 or more battle deaths, according to Correlates of War data (Sarkees 2000). The Online Appendix lists the country-years included in the sample. Descriptive statistics are shown in the Online Appendix.

The estimation technique is an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Wooldridge Tests show first-degree serial autocorrelation not to be a problem in the five-year post-conflict sample, but to appear in larger samples, so we include the autoregression factor when using larger samples (Baltagi 2005, 84-85). We estimate the model using fixed effects because there are important country-specific FDI determinants (such as factor endowment or business opportunities) that may not be captured by the baseline model. Furthermore, a series of Hausman tests show that there is a systematic difference between the results of the two types of models and that random effects are inconsistent.

Findings

In order to examine whether FDI responds to a particular set of determinants in post-conflict countries, we first run a baseline model on the full sample of developing countries (see Table 1).²⁴ Model 1 includes economic and political determinants common in the literature. As expected, FDI is positively associated with Market size, Economic development, GDP growth, Trade openness, and Democracy. Instability does not achieve statistical significance.

Table 1.

Baseline Models: Different Samples

	All developing countries	Post-conflict developing countries
	Model 1^a	Model 2	Model 3
Economic determinants
FDI _t ₋₁	.389	.367
FDI _t ₋₁	(.016) ***	(.034) ***
Prewar FDI			.242
Prewar FDI			(.052) ***
Market size _t ₋₁	2.585	1.286	2.014
Market size _t ₋₁	(.398) ***	(1.320)	(1.579)
Economic development _t ₋₁	.182	.174	.362
Economic development _t ₋₁	(.066) ***	(.385)	(.422)
GDP growth _t ₋₁	.045	.070	.169
GDP growth _t ₋₁	(.013) ***	(.023) ***	(.028) ***
Trade openness _t ₋₁	.007	.003	.004
Trade openness _t ₋₁	(.004)*	(.015)	(.018)
Political determinants
Instability _t ₋₁	−.012	−.036	−.003
Instability _t ₋₁	(.024)	(.069)	(.081)
Democracy _t ₋₁	.150	.005	−.450
Democracy _t ₋₁	(.088)*	(.284)	(.314)
Intercept	−39.717	−20.240	−31.633
Intercept	(5.945) ***	(21.356)	(25.554)
N	3,748	510	434
Number of groups	150	83	72
R ² (within)	0.202	0.240	0.157
R ² (between)	0.017	0.480	0.022
R ² (overall)	0.012	0.345	0.068
AIC	21,845.13	2,867.801	2,466.228
BIC	21,894.96	2,901.755	2,498.812

Note. AIC = Akaike information criterion; BIC = Bayesian information criterion; FDI = foreign direct investment; GDP = gross domestic product. Boldface values indicate statistical significance at <.10. Estimation is by fixed effects regression. Standard errors are in italics. Statistical significance is indicated as follows: *p < .10. ***p < .01.

^aAR(1) disturbances correction.

We run the same model on the subsample of interest, that is, post-conflict developing countries (model 2). Except for GDP growth, none of the determinants of FDI in all developing countries achieves statistical significance in a sample of post-conflict countries. This suggests that investors may not pay attention to the same indicators in post-conflict countries and that FDI may respond to a different set of determinants of in post-conflict countries. In model 3, we replace FDI _t ₋₁ with the level of FDI the countries received before the conflict started, for theoretical and methodological reasons. Given that both GDP and FDI flows are affected by conflicts, Pre-war FDI better captures both the country’s potential for investment in “normal times” and return-to-the-mean processes. Furthermore, the inclusion of this variable improves model fit. Using FDI _t ₋₁ instead does not change the results presented in the following sections.

Two notes regarding models 1 through 3: first, these models intend to show that the variables included behave as the literature would expect on a conventional sample, in order to address potential concerns over operationalization in the models run on the post-conflict sample. These models also show the explanatory power of the conventional specification (R ²) in both samples. Second, it is not our purpose to explain the effect of aid on the general sample because our theory is specific to post-conflict contexts.

Table 2 shows models that include aid variables. Model 4 includes a measure of total bilateral development aid. The coefficient associated with Total aid is positive but does not achieve statistical significance. Overall, the statistical insignificance of Total aid suggests that aid—when not separated by whether it is geostrategically motivated or not—is not related to FDI.²⁵

Table 2.

Effect of Aid on FDI in Post-conflict Developing Countries

	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8	Model 9	Model 10^a	Model 11^a
Total aid _t ₋₁	3.367
Total aid _t ₋₁	(3.893)
Non-US aid _t ₋₁		25.429	23.841	22.461	22.627	25.877	24.161	22.380
Non-US aid _t ₋₁		(6.734)***	(7.318)***	(6.759)***	(6.814)***	(6.717)***	(8.531)***	(8.915)**
Non-US aid _t ₋₁ × Year count							−4.238	−3.916
Non-US aid _t ₋₁ × Year count							(1.857)**	(1.952)**
US aid _t ₋₁		−38.393	−37.499	−38.075	−37.896	−39.045	−55.597	−45.740
US aid _t ₋₁		(11.176)***	(11.412)***	(11.074)***	(11.103)***	(11.146)***	(18.463)***	(18.972)**
US aid _t ₋₁ × Year Count							14.331	12.587
US aid _t ₋₁ × Year Count							(5.012)***	(5.161)**
Economic determinants
Prewar FDI	.230	.220	.226	.202	.206	.223	.535	.488
Prewar FDI	(.054)***	(.053)***	(.055)***	(.053)***	(.055)***	(.053)***	(.074)***	(.078)**
Market size _t ₋₁	1.967	1.555	1.343	−2.989	−4.282	.996	.301	−2.079
Market size _t ₋₁	(1.580)	(1.552)	(1.758)	(2.272)	(3.250)	(1.577)	(.154)*	(1.615)
Economic development _t ₋₁	.374	.357	.348	.352	.280	.303	.506	.323
Economic development _t ₋₁	(.422)	(.414)	(.436)	(.410)	(.438)	(.413)	(.441)	(.462)
GDP growth _t ₋₁	.171	.152	.153	.139	.141	.149	.052	.048
GDP growth _t ₋₁	(.028)***	(.028)***	(.028)***	(.028)***	(.028)***	(.028)***	(.021)**	(.022)**
Trade openness _t ₋₁	.0008	−.004	−.003	−.004	−.003	−.007	−.002	−.001
Trade openness _t ₋₁	(.018)	(.018)	(.019)	(.018)	(.018)	(.018)	(.014)	(.015)
Political determinants
Instability _t ₋₁	−.005	−.022	−.023	−.036	−.031	.004	−.033	−.026
Instability _t ₋₁	(.081)	(.080)	(.081)	(.079)	(.079)	(.080)	(.043)	(.044)
Democracy _t ₋₁	−.455	−.270	−.300	−.154	−.144	−.331	.0009	−.200
Democracy _t ₋₁	(.314)	(.311)	(.319)	(.311)	(.313)	(.312)	(.298)	(.307)
Other controls
Conflict intensity			.010
Conflict intensity			(.018)
Cold war				−3.499
Cold war				(1.271)***
1980					.922
1980					(1.258)
1990					4.443
1990					(1.833)**
2000					4.673
2000					(2.420)*
Year count						.302	.612	.510
Year count						(.167)*	(.170)***	(.193)**
Year dummies								(omitted)
Intercept	−30.834	−24.596	−21.139	49.832	66.320	−16.083	−8.956	−8.642
Intercept	(25.580)	(25.110)	(28.417)	(36.753)	(51.352)	(25.472)	(.863)***	(.950)***
N	434	434	425	434	434	434	631	631
Number of groups	72	72	72	72	72	72	69	69
R² (within)	0.158	0.195	0.197	0.211	0.213	0.202	0.133	0.200
R² (between)	0.019	0.009	0.012	0.014	0.012	0.011	0.172	0.185
R² (overall)	0.068	0.079	0.095	0.066	0.050	0.109	0.173	0.149
AIC	2467.312	2450.306	2409.379	2443.071	2446.405	2448.318	3251.92	3271.242
BIC	2503.969	2491.036	2453.952	2487.874	2499.355	2493.122	3309.735	3484.712

Note. AIC = Akaike information criterion; BIC = Bayesian information criterion; FDI = foreign direct investment; GDP = gross domestic product. Boldface values indicate statistical significance at <.10. Estimation is by fixed effects (within) regression. Standard errors are in italics. Statistical significance is indicated as follows: *p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

^aTen-year post-conflict sample, with AR(1) disturbances correction.

In models 5 through 9, we divide aid into non-US and US aid. Holding other variables constant, and as expected by the theory, whereas Non-US aid is positively associated with FDI, US aid is negative. A one percentage point increase in aid/GDP is associated with a twenty-two to twenty-six percentage point increase in FDI/GDP—when the aid is provided by OECD members other than the United States.²⁶ However, a one percentage point increase in US aid/GDP is associated with a thirty-seven to thirty-nine percentage point decrease in FDI/GDP. Aid from the United States and aid from other donors have opposite effects on FDI. These results provide support for Hypotheses 1 and 2.

The substantive impact of the aid variables is considerable. Table 3 shows the effect of a 1-standard deviation (SD) increase in the statistically significant independent variables on FDI. A one SD increase in Non-US aid is associated with a 1.88 percentage point-FDI/GDP increase (FDI’s unconditional sample mean is 2.90 and its SD is 8.61). An increase of 1 SD in US aid is associated with a 1.20 percentage point FDI/GDP decrease. These effects are important when compared with the impact of the other significant variables: a 1-SD increase in GDP growth is associated with 1.38 percentage point increase in FDI/GDP, and 1-SD increase in prewar FDI is associated with a 1.95 percentage point increase in FDI/GDP.

Table 3.

Unconditional Effect of Aid on FDI in Post-conflict Developing Countries: Substantive Impact (According to Model 6)

Independent variable	Effect of one standard deviation of the independent variable on FDI/GDP
Non-US aid_t ₋₁	1.874
US aid_t ₋₁	−1.200
Prewar FDI	1.946
GDP growth_t−1	1.382

Note. FDI = foreign direct investment; GDP = gross domestic product.

The coefficients associated with the variables of interest change very little with the inclusion of additional controls. Model 6 controls for the intensity of the conflict. Neither the number of deaths during the conflict nor the duration of the conflict²⁷ has a significant effect on FDI. Models 7 through 9 include different temporal controls, which generally do not affect the independent variables of interest. Cold war has a negative effect, indicating that FDI/GDP was lower between 1970 and 1989 than after 1990 (see model 7).²⁸ Model 8 includes decade dummies. Regressions with different omitted decade variables show similar effects as the cold war variable: the important differences are between the 1970s and 1980s on one hand, and the 1990s and 2000s on the other.²⁹ Finally, Year count is positive (although it only achieves .1 level of statistical significance). This coefficient indicates a positive trend in the years after the conflict: additional years elapsed since the end of the conflict are associated with increasing FDI. This result may not seem surprising because of the recovery that countries experience after a conflict, but note that the dependent variable is FDI normalized over GDP. Therefore, this coefficient indicates that FDI grows faster than GDP in the years after the conflict. However, as discussed in the following, our theory posits a positive indirect impact of the time elapsed after the conflict.

The last models go beyond exploring the direct impact of time, and look at how time conditions the impact of aid on FDI. They provide a test of Hypothesis 3. According to this hypothesis, the informational effect of aid in post-conflict countries should decrease as time elapses. Models 10 and 11 include interactions between the aid variables and Year count to test this hypothesis. For these models, we use a broader sample, including ten years after the conflict, for theoretical and methodological reasons. First, a larger time span after the conflict allows us to better test aid’s signaling effect as time elapses since the end of the conflict. Second, models including all the variables and the interaction terms run on the five-year sample risk of being overspecified. However, the magnitude and significance of the linear combination of the aid variables and Year count in the smaller sample are similar to the results plotted in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Impact of aid on foreign direct investment (FDI), conditional on time since the end of the conflict, as of model 10

The coefficients associated with the aid variables indicate the effect of both sources of aid when Year count equals zero (i.e., the last year of the conflict). The interaction terms have the opposite direction of the aid variables (the interaction is negative for Non-US aid, and positive for US aid). This indicates that the effect of both types of aid decreases as time elapses since the end of the conflict. Figure 1 plots the linear combination of Non-US aid and US aid with their interaction terms, according to model 10. The positive association between Non-US aid and FDI decreases in the years following a conflict. This positive association is statistically significant at the .01 level until the third year after the conflict, and at the .05 level in the fourth year. Similarly, the magnitude of the negative association between US aid and FDI decreases in the years following a conflict. This negative association becomes statistically insignificant in the third post-conflict year.³⁰

Table 4 shows the substantive impact of a SD increase in aid on FDI, at different years since the end of the conflict. A 1-SD increase of Non-US aid is associated with a 1.4 percentage point increase in FDI/GDP in the first year after the end of the conflict. However, this effect diminishes to 1.11, 0.81, and 0.51 percentage point increases in the second, third, and fourth year after the conflict, respectively. Similarly, the magnitude of the negative impact of 1-SD increase in Non-US aid on FDI is reduced from 1.03 to 0.67 and 0.31 in the following years. These effects are smaller than the impact of prewar FDI, but are sizable once compared with the substantive impact of GDP growth. These findings provide support for Hypothesis 3.

Table 4.

Conditional Effect of Aid on FDI in Post-conflict Developing Countries: Substantive Impact on Post-conflict Years (according to model 10)

	Effect of one standard deviation of the independent variable on FDI/GDP
Independent variable	Ist year	2nd year	3rd year	4th year
Non-US aid_t ₋₁	1.405***	1.106***	0.807***	0.508*
U.S. aid_t ₋₁	−1.026***	−0.666***	−0.307*
Prewar FDI		4.052***
GDP growth_t− ₁		0.426**

Note. FDI = foreign direct investment; GDP = gross domestic product.

Robustness Tests

These results are robust to different model specifications, data sources, and estimation techniques. They are robust to the substitution of prewar FDI by lagged values of FDI, the use of Polity instead of Freedom House, or of GDP instead of population as a measure for market size. They are also robust to the inclusion of other controls, such as FDI _t ₋₁ (statistically insignificant), capital openness, total level of US aid (to proxy for changes in American aid policy), squared and cubic splines, and a trend variable. In addition to these standard alternate model specifications, we include additional models in the Online Appendix to address other possible concerns. The Appendix models show that results are also robust to the inclusion of additional controls for aid, and to the use of AidData instead of DAC data. The appendix also includes models with random effects, to allow the inclusion of regional dummies, and/or the treatment of pre war FDI as a time invariant variable. As a final check, we present in the appendix a set of models to see if the United States is indeed different from other donors. Models suggest that only the United States has a statistically significant negative impact on FDI in post-conflict countries and that no single country is driving the positive effect of non-US aid.

Note on Alternative Mechanisms and Tests for Endogeneity

The results presented above support the hypotheses derived from our theory. They also suggest the implausibility of alternative mechanisms.

For foreign aid to cause FDI through the “infrastructure effect” (e.g., Dollar and Easterly 1999), aid should boost the host country’s economic and/or social capital and make the host country more attractive for investors. Several factors suggest this is not the mechanism driving our results. First, our models include a measure of economic development that should reflect this effect. Economic development is consistently insignificant in the post-conflict sample. Second, the formation of capital should take longer than a year, and our models use one-year lags. It seems more likely that it is aid’s informational effect what explains such an immediate effect on FDI.³¹ Third, some readers might suggest that the very delivery of the aid attracts FDI (i.e., the building of infrastructure to host the aid agency personnel). It is not clear, however, why only non-US aid would have this effect, and it seems unlikely that aid-supporting infrastructure would have a substantial impact on FDI. One may argue that it is not the actual infrastructure building that attracts FDI, but the expectation that aid will increase it in the near future. In that case, the infrastructure effect would require that foreign aid had a positive effect on the host country’s economy and that investors believed that such a positive effect exists. However, as noted in the second section, this effect is contested in the academic literature and is questioned by the media. Fourth, if the causal mechanism linking aid to FDI is actual or expected infrastructure building, it is hard to explain the differential effect of US and non-US development aid in post-conflict countries. Finally, it is not clear why aid’s infrastructure effect would decrease over time and become insignificant after the fourth year in post-conflict developing countries.

Regarding the “financing effect,” we find no literature or qualitative evidence suggesting that foreign aid is used to fund FDI profit repatriations. Furthermore, and as with other mechanisms, it is unclear why the financing effect would work for non-US aid, but not US aid. Finally, we do not find evidence of a statistically significant effect of US aid on US FDI. Models that exclude US FDI from total FDI inflows produce similar results to the reported here. As Kimura and Tod (2010) found, the “vanguard effect” does not seem to link US aid and US FDI.

We also test for the possibility of endogeneity or reverse causality. Models in the article use independent variables lagged one year to address reverse causality issues, and appendix models conduct further tests, primarily looking at model 5, our baseline. First, we use two-year lags instead of and in addition to one-year lags, and our results hold. Second, we run Arellano-Bond dynamic panel estimation, where aid variables are treated as endogenous. We also reverse the equation, testing whether FDI determines development aid. FDI is consistently statistically insignificant in regressions predicting US aid. FDI is significant in regressions predicting non-US aid. However, the sign on this coefficient is negative, reversed from when FDI is the dependent variable. Overall, these robustness checks suggest that there is not a problem of endogeneity between aid and FDI.

Finally, we test models that include additional determinants of aid as independent variables, in order to see if any of these variables offer a better explanation of FDI than do our aid measures.³² Models are shown in the Appendix and are also run with random effects to include time-invariant variables.³³ Results for hypothesized relationships are robust to the inclusion of these additional aid variables.

Conclusion

This article has examined how foreign aid provides an important signal to investors, affecting FDI flows into post-conflict developing countries. We argued that post-conflict situations are uniquely low-information environments, and therefore investors look for signals to indicate the potential return on their investment. Aid functions as a signal because it suggests some level of trust of the recipient government, on the part of the donor government. However, we also argued that US aid, due to its especially geostrategic nature, could function in a different way than aid from other countries.

Our empirical results, analyzing developing countries and post-conflict developing countries between 1973 and 2008, provided support for our argument. First, FDI in post-conflict situations does not respond to the same determinants as FDI in all developing countries. Whereas a series of economic factors (such as market size, economic development, and trade openness) are associated with FDI in developing countries generally, they do not seem to drive investors’ decisions in post-conflict countries.

Second, we showed that development aid affects FDI in post-conflict countries, but that the direction of the effect is conditional upon whether the aid came from the United States or from other countries. Aid from countries outside the United States appears to be a positive signal in post-conflict countries, as our argument suggests. This finding is robust to different model specifications, and it is substantively important. The positive association between aid and FDI is almost immediate, suggesting that aid’s signaling effect takes place before and independently from whether development aid has accomplished its intended purpose. In other words, aid can bring unintended benefits in post-conflict countries.

However, US aid seems to function as a warning sign, and not a security guarantee that safeguards or attracts investments. We describe it as a warning sign because of the US tendency to aid countries not because of their economic potential or need, but instead for geostrategic reasons. We are somewhat cautious when interpreting the US aid finding, however, because this negative effect is sensitive to the time elapsed after the conflict. Regardless, the substantial difference between the effect of US and non-US aid on FDI is consistent with our theory about aid as a signal, and the importance of whether it can be seen as geostrategic.

Finally, the effect of aid on FDI exists right after the conflict, but vanishes over time. It is likely that as time elapses since the end of the conflict, more information become available about the economic and political environment, and that investors rely mainly on that information and not on signals. This apparent time effect adds weight to our argument that aid is a signaling mechanism, especially valuable in the low-information post-conflict setting.

This project has implications for several areas of research. Regarding FDI literature, we have shown that post-conflict environments are different from other environments. Are there other sets of countries or periods that have unique determinants of FDI? Our theory suggested the importance of signaling in low-information environments. Researchers should take into consideration the availability of information in the cases they study, and consider the potential for signal effects when information is not as available.

The project also speaks to the aid literature. Several recent studies examine links between aid and FDI (Asiedu, Jinc, and Nandwa 2009; Harms and Lutz 2006; Kimura and Tod 2010), but ours is unique for the signaling argument. Aid could function as a signal in other situations, and future research should consider this. Possible avenues of investigation include disaggregating different types of aid, as they could suggest different signals, and/or disaggregating FDI flows to explore the sensitivity of them to the signal provided by development aid. Our research also adds to the literature on the geostrategic nature of US foreign aid (e.g., Lai 2003; Meernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998).

Finally, the research is of normative interest to policy makers. Post-conflict developing countries are especially fragile (e.g., Collier 2003). The international community benefits when these countries stabilize and develop, and increased FDI offers a path to these outcomes. Aid is a potential remedy, and our research shows that aid from countries other than the United States can offer important unintended benefits. Aid from the United States, however, seems to concern investors more than draw them. We do not suggest that the United States should curtail aid, but instead reconsider the strategic basis for its aid distribution patterns. Furthermore, the United States could increase its work to encourage FDI in developing countries generally.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank participants for their feedback. Special thanks go to David Bearce, Charles Gochman, Michael Goodhart, Julia Gray, Joy Langston, Mariana Magaldi, the editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments. We also thank Deborah Klodowski for her research assistance.

Authors’ Note

Authors’ names appear in alphabetical order, and equal authorship is implied. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2009 APSA Annual Meeting, the 2010 ISA Annual Meeting, and at seminars at the University of Pittsburgh and Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). All replication materials are posted at http://jcr.sagepub.com/. The data, do files, and online appendix are posted at .

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

Alesina

Alberto

Dollar

David

. 2000. “Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?” Journal of Economic Growth 5 (1): 33–63.

Arellano

Cristina

Bulíř

Aleš

Lane

Timothy

Lipschitz

Leslie

. 2009. “The Dynamic Implications of Foreign Aid and Its Variability.” Journal of Development Economics 88 (1): 87–102.

Asiedu

Elizabeth

. 2002. “On the Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: Is Africa Different?” World Development 30 (1): 107–19.

Asiedu

Elizabeth

. 2006. “Foreign Direct Investment in Africa: The Role of Natural Resources, Market Size, Government Policy, Institutions and Political Instability.” The World Economy 29 (1): 63–77.

Asiedu

Elizabeth

Jinc

Nandwa

Boaz

. 2009. “Does Foreign Aid Mitigate the Adverse Effect of Expropriation Risk on Foreign Direct Investment?” Journal of International Economics 78 (2): 268–75.

Baltagi

Badi H.

2005. Econometric Analysis of Panel Data, 3rd ed. New York, John Wiley.

Banks

Arthur S.

2011. Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive. Jerusalem, Israel: Databanks International.

Bearce

David H.

Tirone

Daniel C.

. 2010. “Foreign Aid Effectiveness and the Strategic Goals of Donor Governments.” Journal of Politics 72 (3): 837–51.

Berthélemy

Jean-Claude

. 2006. “Bilateral Donors’ Interest vs. Recipients’ Development Motives in Aid Allocation: Do All Donors Behave the Same?” Review of Development Economics 10 (2): 179–94.

10.

Berthélemy

Jean-Claude

Tichit

Ariane

. 2004. “Bilateral Donors' Aid Allocation Decisions—A Three-Dimensional Panel Analysis.” International Review of Economics & Finance 13 (3): 253–74.

11.

Biglaiser

Glen

Hicks

Brian

Huggins

Caitlin

. 2008. “Portfolio Investment in the Developing World.” Comparative Political Studies 41 (8): 1092–116.

12.

Blaise

Severine

. 2005. “On the Link Between Japanese ODA and FDI in China: A Micro Economic Evaluation Using Conditional Logit Analysis.” Applied Economics 37 (1): 51–5.

13.

Blanton

Shannon Lindsey

Blanton

Robert G.

. 2007. “What Attracts Foreign Investors? An Examination of Human Rights and Foreign Direct Investment.” Journal of Politics 69 (1): 143–55.

14.

Boone

Peter

. 1996. “Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid.” European Economic Review 40 (2): 289–329.

15.

Boschini

Anne

Olofsgard

Anders

. 2007. “Foreign Aid: An Instrument for Fighting Poverty or Communism?” Journal of Development Studies 43 (4): 622–48.

16.

Broz

J. Lawrence

. 2002. “Political System Transparency and Monetary Commitment Regimes.” International Organization 56 (4): 861–87.

17.

Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce

Smith

Alastair

. 2007. “Foreign Aid and Policy Concessions.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (2): 251–84.

18.

Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce

Smith

Alastair

. 2009. “A Political Economy of Aid.” International Organization 63 (2): 309–40.

19.

Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce

Smith

Alastair

. 2010. “Leader Survival, Revolutions, and the Nature of Government Finance.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (4): 936–50.

20.

Burnside

Craig

Dollar

David

. 2000. “Aid, Policies, and Growth.” American Economic Review 90 (4): 847–68.

21.

Busse

Matthias

Hefeker

Carsten

. 2007. “Political Risk, Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment.” European Journal of Political Economy 23 (2): 397–415.

22.

Büthe

Tim

Milner

Helen V.

. 2008. “The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment into Developing Countries: Increasing FDI through International Trade Agreements?” American Journal of Political Science 52 (4): 741–62.

23.

Buzan

Barry

. 2006. “Will the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ be the New Cold War?” International Affairs 82 (6): 1101–18.

24.

Cingranelli

David L.

David

Richards. 2010. The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset. Accessed December 30, 2011, http://www.humanrightsdata.org

25.

Collier

Paul

. 1999. “On the Economic Consequences of Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers 51 (1): 161–83.

26.

Collier

Paul

. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press.

27.

Collier

Paul

Hoeffler

Anke

. 2007. “Unintended Consequences: Does Aid Promote Arms Races?” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 69 (2): 1–27.

28.

Desbordes

Rodolphe

Vicard

Vincent

. 2009. “Foreign Direct Investment and Bilateral Investment Treaties: An International Political Perspective.” Journal of Comparative Economics 37 (3): 372–86.

29.

Dollar

David

Easterly

William R.

. 1999. “The Search for the Key: Aid, Investment, and Policies in Africa.” Journal of African Economies 8 (4): 546–77.

30.

Dorn

James A.

2004. “Peter Bauer Was On Target: Foreign Aid Sustains Poverty.” Investor’s Business Daily, February 23.

31.

Doucouliagos

Hristos

Paldam

Martin

. 2008. “Aid Effectiveness on Growth: A Meta Study.” European Journal of Political Economy 24: 1–24.

32.

Dreher

Axel

Nunnenkamp

Peter

Thiele

Rainer

. 2008. “Does U.S. Aid Buy U.N. General Assembly Votes? A Disaggregated Analysis.” Public Choice 136 (1): 139–64.

33.

Easterly

William R.

2001. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

34.

Feng

. 2001. “Political Freedom, Political Instability, and Policy Uncertainty: A Study of Political Institutions and Private Investment in Developing Countries.” International Studies Quarterly 45 (2): 271–94.

35.

Fleck

Robert K.

Kilby

Christopher

. 2010. “Changing Aid Regimes? U.S. Foreign Aid from the Cold War to the War on Terror.” Journal of Development Economics 91 (2): 185–97.

36.

Freedom House. 2009. Freedom in the World. Freedom House. Accessed May 7, 2010. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world.

37.

Friedman

Thomas L.

1989. “Baker Says U.S. Seeks $1 Billion in Economic Aid to the Philippines.” New York Times, May, 7.

38.

Ghobarah

Hazem Adam

Huth

Paul

Russett

Bruce

. 2003. “Civil Wars Kill and Maim People-Long After the Shooting Stops.” American Political Science Review 97 (2): 189–202.

39.

Gleditsch

Nils Petter

Wallensteen

Peter

Eriksson

Mikael

Sollenberg

Margareta

Strand

Havard

. 2002. “Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 39 (5): 615–37.

40.

Gray

Julia

. 2009. “International Organization as a Seal of Approval: European Union Accession and Investor Risk.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (4): 931–49.

41.

Harms

Philipp

Lutz

Matthias

. 2006. “Aid, Governance and Private Foreign Investment: Some Puzzling Findings for the 1990s.” The Economic Journal 116 (513): 773–90.

42.

Hodler

Roland

. 2007. “Rent Seeking and Aid Effectiveness.” International Tax and Public Finance 14 (5): 525–41.

43.

Hooper

Vince

Kim

Suk-Joong

. 2007. “The Determinants of Capital Inflows: Does Opacity of Recipient Country Explain the Flows?” Economic Systems 31 (1): 35–48.

44.

Jensen

Nathan M.

2003. “Democratic Governance and Multinational Corporations: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment.” International Organization 57 (3): 587–616.

45.

Jensen

Nathan M.

2004. “Crisis, Conditions, and Capital: The Effect of International Monetary Fund Agreements on Foreign Direct Investment Inflows.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (2): 194–210.

46.

Jensen

Nathan M.

2006. Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation. A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment. 3rd reprint ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

47.

Jensen

Nathan

McGillivray

Fiona

. 2005. “Federal Institutions and Multinational Investors: Federalism, Government Credibility, and Foreign Direct Investment.” International Interactions 31 (4): 303–25.

48.

Jensen

Nathan M.

Young

Daniel J.

. 2008. “A Violent Future? Political Risk Insurance Markets and Violence Forecasts.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52 (4): 527–47.

49.

Kapfer

Steven

Nielsen

Richard

Nielson

Daniel L.

. 2007. Paper presented “If You Build It, Will They Come? Infrastructure Aid and Foreign Direct Investment.” Paper presented 2007 Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) Conference, Chicago, April 14.

50.

Karakaplan

Ugur

Neyapti

Bilin

Sayek

Selin

. 2005. “Aid and Foreign Direct Investment: International Evidence.” Working Papers 2005/12, Turkish Economic Association, Ankara, Turkey.

51.

Karras

Georgios

. 2006. “Foreign Aid and Long-Run Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence for a Panel of Developing Countries.” Journal of International Development 18 (1): 15–28.

52.

Kimura

Hidemi

Tod

Yasuyuki

. 2010. “Is Foreign Aid a Vanguard of Foreign Direct Investment? A Gravity-Equation Approach.” World Development 38 (4): 482–97.

53.

Knack

Stephen

. 2001. “Aid Dependence and the Quality of Governance: Cross-Country Empirical Tests.” Southern Economic Journal 68 (2): 310–29.

54.

Knack

Stephen

. 2004. “Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?” International Studies Quarterly 48 (1): 251–66.

55.

Kono

Daniel Y.

2006. “Optimal Obfuscation: Democracy and Trade Policy Transparency.” American Political Science Review 100 (3): 369–84.

56.

Kosack

Stephen

Tobin

Jennifer

. 2006. “Funding Self-Sustaining Development: The Role of Aid, FDI, and Government in Economic Success.” International Organization 60 (1): 205–43.

57.

Kreutz

Joakim

. 2010. “How and When Armed Conflicts End: Introducing the Conflict Termination Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 47 (2): 243–50.

58.

Krishnamurti

Chandrasekhar

. 2009. “Behavioral Finance and Investment Strategy.” In Investment Management: A Modern Guide to Security Analysis and Stock Selection, edited by Vishwanath

Krishnamurti

, 627–34. Guildford, UK: Springer.

59.

Kuziemko

Ilyana

Werker

Eric

. 2006. “How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations.” Journal of Political Economy 114 (5): 905–30.

60.

Lacina

Bethany

Gleditsch

Nils Petter

. 2005. “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths.” European Journal of Population 21 (2-3): 145–66.

61.

Lai

Brian

. 2003. “Examining the Goals of US Foreign Assistance in the Post-cold War Period, 1991-96.” Journal of Peace Research 40 (1): 103–28.

62.

Lebovic

James H.

Voeten

Erik

. 2009. “The Cost of Shame: International Organizations and Foreign Aid in the Punishing of Human Rights Violators.” Journal of Peace Research 46 (1): 79–97.

63.

Quan

. 2006. “Democracy, Autocracy, and Tax Incentives to Foreign Direct Investors: A Cross-National Analysis.” Journal of Politics 68 (1): 62–74.

64.

Quan

. 2009. “Democracy, Autocracy, and Expropriation of Foreign Direct Investment.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (8): 1098–127.

65.

Quan

Resnick

Adam

. 2003. “Reversal of Fortunes: Democratic Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows to Developing Countries.” International Organization 57:175–211.

66.

Linzer

Dafna

. 2003. “Security Council Members with Pivotal Iraq Votes Receive Billions in Aid from U.S.” Associated Press, March 5.

67.

Lumsdaine

David H.

1993. Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949-1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

68.

Manger

Mark S.

2009. Investing in Protection. The Politics of Preferential Trade Agreements between North and South. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

69.

McGillivray

Mark

Feeny

Simon

Herme

Niels

Lensink

Robert

. 2006. “Controversies Over the Impact of Development Aid: It Works; It Doesn't; It Can, But That Depends.” Journal of International Development 18 (7): 1031–50.

70.

Meernik

James

Krueger

Eric L.

Poe

Steven C.

. 1998. “Testing Models of U.S. Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid During and after the Cold War.” Journal of Politics 60 (1): 63–85.

71.

Mills

Greg

. 2009. “Not Aiding Africa.” International Herald Tribune. New York Times, April 23, p. 6.

72.

Mody

Ashoka

Sadka

Efraim

Razin

Assaf

. 2003. “The Role of Information in Driving FDI Flows: Host-Country Transparency and Source-Country Specialization.” IMF Working Papers, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.

73.

Morrison

Kevin M.

2007. “Natural Resources, Aid, and Democratization: A Best-Case Scenario.” Public Choice 131 (3-4): 365–86.

74.

Morrison

Kevin M.

2009. “Oil, Nontax Revenue, and the Redistributional Foundations of Regime Stability.” International Organization 63 (1): 107–38.

75.

Murdoch

James C.

Sandler

Todd

. 2002. “Economic Growth, Civil Wars, and Spatial Spillovers.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (1): 91–110.

76.

Neumayer

Eric

. 2003a. “The Determinants of Aid Allocation by Regional Multilateral Development Banks and United Nations Agencies.” International Studies Quarterly 47 (1): 101–22.

77.

Neumayer

Eric

. 2003b. “Is Respect for Human Rights Rewarded—An Analysis of Total Bilateral and Multilateral Aid Flows.” Human Rights Quarterly 25:510–27.

78.

Neumayer

Eric

Spess

Laura

. 2005. “Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Increase Foreign Direct Investment to Developing Countries?” World Development 33 (10): 1567–85.

79.

Nielsen

Richard A.

Findley

Michael G.

Davis

Zachary S.

Candland

Tara

Nielson

Daniel L.

. 2011. “Foreign Aid Shocks as a Cause of Violent Armed Conflict.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (2): 219–32.

80.

Plümper

Thomas

Troeger

Vera E.

. 2007. “Efficient Estimation of Time-Invariant and Rarely Changing Variables in Finite Sample Panel Analyses with Unit Fixed Effects.” Political Analysis 15 (2): 124–39.

81.

Rajan

Raghuram G.

Subramanian

Arvind

. 2010. “Aid, Dutch Disease, and Manufacturing Growth.” Journal of Development Economics 94 (1): 106–18.

82.

Roodman

David

. 2007. “The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development, and Cross-Country Empirics.” The World Bank Economic Review 21 (2): 255–77.

83.

Sarkees

Meredith Reid

. 2000. “The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 18 (1): 123–44.

84.

Selaya

Pablo

Sunesen

Eva Rytter

. 2008. “Does Foreign Aid Increase Foreign Direct Investment?” Department of Economics Discussion Paper No. 08-04, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

85.

Stephens

Bret.

2010. “To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid.” The Wall Street Journal, January 19, p. 23.

86.

Svensson

Jakob

. 2000. “Foreign Aid and Rent-Seeking.” Journal of International Economics 51 (2): 437–61.

87.

Tierney

Michael J.

Nielson

Daniel L.

Hawkins

Darren G.

Timmons Roberts

Findley

Michael G.

Powers

Ryan M.

Parks

Bradley

Wilson

Sven E.

Hicks

Robert L.

. 2011. “More Dollars than Sense: Refining Our Knowledge of Development Finance Using Aid Data.” World Development 39 (11): 1891–906.

88.

Tsai

Pan-Long

. 1994. “Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment and Its Impact on Economic Growth.” Journal of Economic Development 19 (1): 137–63.

89.

Vaknin

Sam.

2003. “Analysis: The Cost of Coalition Building.” United Press International, February 24. Accessed January 12, 2011, http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2003/02/24/Analysis-The-cost-of-coalition-building-I/UPI-35961046130224/

90.

World Bank. 2010. World Development Indicators On-Line. Accessed October 2010. http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.42 MB

0.00 MB