easterly, levine, roodman; aid, policies and growth

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NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES NEW DATA, NEW DOUBTS: A COMMENT ON BURNSIDE AND DOLLAR’S “AID, POLICIES, AND GROWTH” (2000) William Easterly Ross Levine David Roodman Working Paper 9846 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9846 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 July 2003 We are grateful to Craig Burnside for supplying data and assisting in the reconstruction of previous results, without holding him responsible in any way for the work in this paper. Thanks also to Francis Ng and Prarthna Dayal for generous assistance with updating the Sachs-Warner openness variable, and to 3 anonymous referees, Craig Burnside, and Henrik Hansen for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research ©2003 by William Easterly, Ross Levine, and David Roodman. All rights reserved. Short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including © notice, is given to the source.

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Page 1: Easterly, Levine, Roodman; Aid, Policies and Growth

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES

NEW DATA, NEW DOUBTS:A COMMENT ON BURNSIDE AND DOLLAR’S

“AID, POLICIES, AND GROWTH” (2000)

William EasterlyRoss Levine

David Roodman

Working Paper 9846http://www.nber.org/papers/w9846

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH1050 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 02138July 2003

We are grateful to Craig Burnside for supplying data and assisting in the reconstruction of previous results,without holding him responsible in any way for the work in this paper. Thanks also to Francis Ng andPrarthna Dayal for generous assistance with updating the Sachs-Warner openness variable, and to 3anonymous referees, Craig Burnside, and Henrik Hansen for helpful comments. The views expressed hereinare those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research

©2003 by William Easterly, Ross Levine, and David Roodman. All rights reserved. Short sections of textnot to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including© notice, is given to the source.

Page 2: Easterly, Levine, Roodman; Aid, Policies and Growth

New Data, New Doubts: A Comment on Burnside and Dollar’s “Aid,Policies, and Growth” (2000)William Easterly, Ross Levine, and David RoodmanNBER Working Paper No. 9846July 2003JEL No. F35, O40, O11, O23

ABSTRACT

The Burnside and Dollar (2000, AER) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment

has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering

exercise that updates their data from 1970 -93 to 1970 -97, as well as filling in missing data for the

original period 1970 -93. We find that the Burnside and Dollar (2002, AER) finding is not robust

to the use of this additional data.

William Easterly Ross LevineNew York University Finance Department, Room 3-257Center for Global Development Carlson School of Managementand Institute for International Economics University of [email protected] 321 19th Avenue South

Minneapolis, MN 55455and [email protected]

David RoodmanCenter for Global [email protected]

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I. Introduction

In an extraordinarily influential paper, Burnside and Dollar (2000, p. 847) find that “…

aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and

trade policies but has little effect in the presence of poor policies.” This finding has enormous

policy implications. The Burnside and Dollar (2000, henceforth BD) result provides a role and

strategy for foreign aid. If aid stimulates growth only in countries with good policies, this

suggests that (1) aid can promote economic growth and (2) it is crucial that foreign aid be

distributed selectively to countries that have adopted sound policies. International aid agencies,

public policymakers, and the press quickly recognized the importance of the BD findings.1

This paper reassesses the links between aid, policy, and growth using more data. The BD

data end in 1993. We reconstruct the BD database from original sources and thus (1) add

additional countries and observations to the BD dataset because new information has become

available since they conducted their analyses and (2) extend the data through 1997. Thus, using

the BD methodology, we reexamine whether aid influences growth in the presence of good

policies.

Given our focus on retesting BD, we do not summarize the vast pre-BD literature on aid

and growth. We just note that there was a long and inconclusive literature that was hampered by

limited data availability, debates about the mechanisms through which aid would affect growth,

and disagreements over econometric specification (See, Papanek, 1972; Cassen, 1986; Mosley et

al., 2001; Boone, 1994, 1996; and Hansen and Tarp’s 2000 review).

1 See, for instance, the World Bank (1998, 2002a, b), the U.K. Department for International Development (2000),

President George W. Bush’s speech (March 16, 2002), the announcement by the White House on creating the

Millennium Challenge Corporation (White House 2002), as well as the Economist (March 16, 2002), a Washington

Post editorial (February 9, 2002), and a Financial Times column by Alan Beattie (March 11, 2002).

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Since BD found that aid boosts growth in good policy environments, there have been a

number of other papers reacting to their results, including Collier and Dehn (2001), Collier and

Dollar (2001), Dalgaard and Hansen (2001), Guillaumont and Chauvet (2001), Hansen and Tarp

(2001), and Lensink and White (2001). These papers conduct useful variations and extensions

(some of which had already figured in the pre-BD literature), such as introducing additional

control variables, using non-linear specifications, etc. Some of these papers confirm the message

that aid only works in a good policy environment, while others drive out the aid*policy

interaction term with other variables. This literature has the usual limitations of how to choose

the appropriate specification without clear guidance from theory, which often means there are

more plausible specifications than there are data points in the sample.

We differentiate our paper from these others by NOT deviating from the BD

specification. Thus, we do not test the robustness of the results to an unlimited number of

variations, but instead maintain the BD methodology. This paper conducts a very simple

robustness check by adding new data that were unavailable to BD. Thus, we expand the sample

used over their time period and extend the data from 1993 to 1997.

II. Robustness checks on the aid-policy-growth relationship

BD’s preferred specification is a growth regression with several control variables

common to the literature, plus terms for the amount of international aid provided to a country

(Aid), an index of the quality of the policy environment (Policy), and an aid-policy interaction

term (Aid*Policy). As control variables, BD include the logarithm of initial Gross Domestic

Product per capita (Log initial GDP), a measure of ethnic fractionalization (Ethnic), the rate of

political assassinations (Assassinations), the interaction between ethnic fractionalization and

political assassinations (Ethnic*Assassinations), regional dummy variables for Sub-Saharan

Africa and fast-growing East Asian countries (Sub-Saharan Africa and Fast-growing E. Asia

respectively), an index of institutional quality (Institutional Quality), and a measure of financial

depth (M2/GDP lagged). The BD policy index, Policy, is constructed from measures of budget

balance, inflation, and the Sachs-Warner openness index. This specification corresponds to

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regression 5 (all developing countries) and 8 (low income countries only) in the BD paper. In

Table 1, we first show regression 5 from BD using ordinary least squares (OLS). The sample

here is middle-income and low-income developing countries, and five outliers are omitted. These

are the five outliers omitted by BD. We reproduce exactly their results in column (1).

Since BD exclude observations that they consider outliers and since we want to follow

the BD methodology as closely as possible, we adopt the Hadi method for identifying and

eliminating outliers as we add new data. The Hadi method measures the distance of data points

from the main body of data and then iteratively reduces the sample to exclude distant data points.

Critically, when we apply the Hadi method to the BD data, we confirm their results. We will

continue to use the Hadi procedure in all the regressions in this paper except where we explicitly

note otherwise. In the spirit of the original BD methodology, we choose a Hadi significance level

of 0.05 that excludes only a handful of outliers (between 5 and 11). (See Table 2.) Note,

however, that keeping the outliers in the regressions does not change this paper’s conclusion.

To test the robustness of the BD results, we undertook an extensive data gathering

exercise. We collected annual data on all the variables in the BD sample. We went back to the

original sources and reconstructed the entire database and extended the data through 1997. As

part of this exercise, we updated the Sachs and Warner openness index. To construct the policy

index, we follow the BD regression procedure and we always include the budget balance,

inflation, and Sachs-Warner openness as components of Policy. In addition to extending the

sample through to 1997, we were able to expand the original BD data. For example, we found

broader coverage on International Country Risk Guide institutional quality for 1982 by using the

original source of the data. Considering both the cross-section and the time series expansion, we

have increased the sample size from their original 275 observations in 56 countries to 356

observations in 62 countries (before excluding outliers). An appendix describing the

methodology is presented below. The data are available at www.cgdev.org. Although our data

did not match up exactly with theirs (there are inevitably data revisions, where values change,

new data become available, and some values are reclassified as missing), the correlations are all

above 0.95 within their sample, except for budget balance, which is 0.92., and institutional

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quality, which is 0.90. Moreover, we were able to reproduce their results with our data when

we restrict the sample to their time period and their countries as discussed below.

The BD results do not hold when we use new data that includes additional countries and

extends the coverage through 1997. The aid*policy interaction term enters insignificantly when

using data from 1970–1997 (Column 2). Not only that, but the coefficient on the aid*policy term

changes markedly, turning negative, with a t-statistic of –1.09. Figure 1 shows both the partial

scatter plot of the original BD sample between growth and aid*policy and the partial scatter plot

using our new, expanded data. As shown, the positive relationship between growth and

aid*policy vanishes when using new data. In these analyses, we continue to use the Hadi method

for eliminating outliers since this method reproduced the original BD results. However, when we

do not use Hadi and run the results on the full sample, we again find that the aid*policy variable

enters insignificantly (we will show these results below).

We perform the same exercise with BD regression 8 for the sample of low income

countries (also following them in omitting outliers). BD note that low income countries might be

a preferred sample to detect the effects of aid, and indeed their aid-policy interaction term is

significant in both OLS and two-stage least squares (2SLS) in their regression 8. In order to

check the robustness of the estimates of the instrumental variables estimates, we do the exercise

in two-stage least squares as shown in columns (3) and (4) of Table 1. We use the same set of

instruments as BD. We are again able to reproduce their results with our dataset (see Table 2

below).

The aid*policy term is insignificant in their regression 8 when we simply add all the data

for low-income countries that we can collect for 1970–93 and the data for 1994–97 (column 4).

The coefficient not only becomes insignificant, but changes sign. Our sample is 52 observations

larger than the BD sample for regression 8.

The fragile results on aid effectiveness remain evident when varying the sample. For

brevity, table 2 shows only the aid*policy coefficients, t-statistics, and number of observations

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for OLS and 2SLS for regressions 5 and 8 for various combinations of sample periods, country

samples, and when including and excluding outliers. We reproduce statistical significance when

restricting our data to the Burnside-Dollar sample period and sample of countries, though the

coefficient sizes are larger when using the new data. The significance of the relationship

between growth and the aid*policy interaction term vanishes, however, if we relax either the

sample period constraint or the country selection constraint for either regression 5 or 8 (i.e. the

whole sample and only the low income sample). The significance vanishes for both OLS and

2SLS in either regression, for using their countries but the whole period sample or for their

sample period but all countries, and for samples excluding outliers and for samples including

outliers. Not only does significance vanish, but the magnitude of the coefficient changes greatly

across the different permutations.

The only significant coefficient out of our various permutations was for OLS for

regression 8 (the low income sample) using the Burnside-Dollar countries for the full sample

period. Since this is one significant coefficient at the 5 percent level out of twenty permutations,

we do not think this provides strong support for the robustness of the Burnside-Dollar results.

We tried all of these same exercises for the other aid*policy regressions that BD report in

the paper. Burnside and Dollar found the aid*policy term to be significant and positive when

they did NOT exclude outliers but added another term aid2*policy (which was significant and

negative). Their results were significant in OLS for the whole sample and the low income

sample, but not in 2SLS, so we report only the OLS results. We are able to reproduce their

results with our dataset using their sample period and sample of countries (Table 3). When we

try these specifications with our expanded dataset, the previous pattern holds: the aid-policy

interaction term is not robust to the use of new data, including various permutations of period

and country selection. In our full sample and in some of the other permutations, the coefficients

on the aid*policy and aid2*policy reverse sign from the BD results

Thus, the result of our paper is as follows: adding new data creates new doubts about the

BD conclusion. When we extend the sample forward to 1997, we no longer find that aid

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promotes growth in good policy environments. Similarly, when we expand the BD data by

using the full set of data available over the original BD period, we no longer find that aid

promotes growth in good policy environments. Our findings regarding the fragility of the aid-

policy-growth nexus is unaffected by excluding or including outliers.

We also experimented with alternative definitions of “aid” and “good policies”, as well as

trying different period lengths (from annual data all the way up to the cross-section for the full

sample). These exercises (available upon request) did not change our conclusion about the

fragility of the aid*policy term – the aid-policy term is not robust to alternative equally plausible

definitions of aid and policy, or to alternative period lengths.

III. Conclusions

This paper reduces the confidence that one can have in the conclusion that aid promotes

growth in countries with sound policies. The paper does not argue that aid is ineffective. We

make a much more limited claim. We simply note that adding additional data to the BD study of

aid effectiveness raises new doubts about the effectiveness of aid and suggests that economists

and policymakers should be less sanguine about concluding that foreign aid will boost growth in

countries with good policies. We believe that BD should be a seminal paper that stimulates

additional work on aid effectiveness, but not yet the final answer on this critical issue. We hope

that further research will continue to explore pressing macroeconomic and microeconomic

questions surrounding foreign aid, such as whether aid can foment reforms in policies and

institutions that in turn foster economic growth, whether some foreign aid delivery mechanisms

work better than others, and what is the political economy of aid in both the donor and the

recipient.

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Table 1: Testing the robustness of Burnside and Dollar panel regressions 5 and 8 to more data (dependent variable: growth of GDP/capita) Regression 1 2 3 4

Sampling universe: All developing countries,

outliers omitted Only low income countries,

outliers omitted Burnside-Dollar Regression: Regression 5, OLS Regression 8, 2SLS

Right-hand side variable:

BD data, BD sample, 1970–

93

new data set, full sample,

1970–97

BD data, BD sample,

1970–93

new data set, full sample,

1970–97 Aid -0.02 0.20 -0.24 -0.16 (0.13) (0.75) (-0.89) (-0.26) Aid * policy 0.19** -0.15 0.25* -0.202 (2.61) (-1.09) (1.99) (-0.65) Log initial GDP per capita -0.60 -0.40 -0.83 -1.214* (-1.02) (-1.06) (-1.02) (-2.02) Ethnic -0.42 -0.01 -0.67 -0.745 (-0.57) (-0.02) (-0.76) (-0.82) Assassinations -0.45 -0.37 -0.76 -0.693 (-1.68) (-1.43) (-1.63) (-1.68) Ethnic * Assassinations. 0.79 0.18 0.63 0.69 (1.74) (0.29) (0.67) (0.78) Sub-Saharan Africa -1.87* -1.68** -2.11** -1.204 (-2.41) (-3.07) (-2.77) (-1.79) Fast-growing E. Asia 1.31* 1.18* 1.46 1.009 (2.19) (2.33) (1.95) (1.40) Institutional quality 0.69** 0.31* 0.85** 0.375* (3.90) (2.53) (4.17) (2.46) M2/GDP lagged 0.01 0.00 0.03 0.014 (0.84) (0.16) (1.39) (1.00) Policy 0.71** 1.22** 0.59 1.613** (3.63) (5.51) (1.49) (2.93) Observations 270 345 184 236 R-squared 0.39 0.33 0.47 0.35 * indicates that the coefficient is significant at the 5% level and ** indicates significance at the 1% level. T-statistics are given in parentheses. The regressions omit outliers, either as described in Burnside and Dollar (2000) or using the Hadi method as discussed in the text. Variable definitions: Aid is Development Assistance/GDP, Policy is a regression-weighted average of macroeconomic policies described in BD, Ethnic is ethnic fractionalization from Easterly and Levine 1997, Assassinations is per million population, Sub-Saharan Africa and Fast-growing E. Asia are dummy variables, Institutional quality is from Knack and Keefer (1995). Other data sources are described in the data appendix available at www.cgdev.org

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Table 2: Coefficient on aid*policy in alternative regressions for growth of GDP/capita

5/OLS 5/2SLS 8/OLS 8/2SLS Burnside and Dollar original 0.19** 0.18 0.27** 0.25*

(2.61) -1.63 (2.97) (1.99)

observations 270 270 184 184 ELR data, BD countries, 1970-93 0.34* 0.56** 0.38* 0.56*

(2.41) (2.87) (2.36) (2.28)

observations 268 268 178 178 ELR data, full sample, 1970-93 -0.08 0.11 -0.13 0.01

(-0.65) (0.52) (-0.9) (0.05)

observations 291 291 199 199 ELR data, BD countries, 1970-97 0.30 0.38 0.40* 0.47

(1.96) (0.75) (2.38) (1.52)

observations 310 310 207 207 ELR data, full sample, 1970-97 -0.15 0.01 -0.20 -0.20

(-1.09) (0.05) (-1.26) (-0.65)

observations 345 345 236 236 ELR data, full sample, outliers included, 1970-93 0.05 0.07 0.00 -0.06

(0.82) (0.86) (0.03) (-0.52)

observations 300 300 205 205 ELR data, full sample, outliers included, 1970-97 0.05 0.06 -0.01 -0.08

(0.81) (0.79) (-0.06) (-0.73)

observations 356 356 244 244 Note: ELR data refers to dataset constructed for this paper as described in text. All regressions omit outliers, either in the original Burnside and Dollar results as described in their paper, or in the ELR results using the Hadi method, except where otherwise noted. T-statistics are in parentheses. The number of observations is given below the t-statistics. *indicates significant at 5% level **indicates significant at 1% level.

Page 11: Easterly, Levine, Roodman; Aid, Policies and Growth

Table 3: Testing Burnside-Dollar specification of growth of GDP/capita regressions adding aid squared*policy (t-statistics in parentheses, observations below t-statistic) 4/OLS 7/OLS

0.20* 0.27*aid*policy (2.07) (2.03)

-0.02* -0.02*aid^2*policy (-2.22) (-2.45)

Burnside and Dollar original

Observations 275 1890.31* 0.28aid*policy (2.30) (1.81)

-0.05* -0.05*aid^2*policy (-2.35) (-2.41)

ELR data, BD countries, 1970-93

Observations 274 183-0.11 -0.27aid*policy

(-1.10) (-1.94)0.02 0.03*aid^2*policy

(1.92) (2.34)ELR data, full sample, 1970-93

Observations 300 2050.20 0.15aid*policy

(1.64) (1.11)-0.03 -0.03aid^2*policy

(-1.58) (-1.56)ELR data, BD countries, 1970-97

Observations 322 216-0.14 -0.27aid*policy

(-1.31) (-1.89)0.03* 0.03*aid^2*policy (2.25) (2.35)

ELR data, full sample, 1970-97

Observations 356 244Note: ELR data refers to dataset constructed for this paper as described in text. *significant at 5% level **significant at 1% level.

9

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Figure 1: Partial scatter plots of growth against aid*policy Top graph: Burnside-Dollar original results

Bottom graph: Results using new dataset

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HTI7

BFA6PAK8

KEN3

MMR4

CRI4

VEN6

MEX4

IND8

IRN6

JOR8

COL3

BOL6

IND6

COL5

ECU6

HND7

MDG3

IDN3KEN8

SLE4

GHA4

URY7

PHL6

MMR3

MMR2

IND4URY2

ZWE4

NGA3

TUR5ETH8

BFA7

URY4

URY5

COL4GHA8BRA8

SLV4

MMR8

TUR6

NGA5GMB2CIV4

PER4

SLE3

MMR7

PER5

SLV7

GHA3

URY6

KOR2PHL2

PHL5

URY3

BOL7

JAM3

NGA8IDN2EGY7TUR4

NGA6

PHL3MEX5HND8ZAR8

NGA7

COG8

CHL2CMR8

PHL4BOL8BWA7

PNG5

PNG8

BRA4GHA7PER7ARG4

CHL3

JOR6

UGA8

ARG7

BRA5

ARG3

GHA6

SLE8

PER6

BWA5

JOR7

BWA4

ARG6

PNG7

ARG5

BWA6

MLI7

PNG6

MLI8 JOR5 NIC8

Note: These partial scatter plots are from regressions 1 and 3 in Table 1. The partial scatter plot

involves the two-dimensional representation of the relationship between growth and aid*policy controlling for the other regressors. Thus, we regress growth against the all of the regressors listed in Table 1 except aid*policy and collect these growth residuals. Then, we regress aid*policy against the same regressors and collect these aid*policy residuals. The figures plot the growth residuals against the aid*policy residuals along with the regression line.

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References Banks, Arthur. Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive. Bronx, NY: Databanks

International, 2002. Boone, Peter. “Aid and growth.” Mimeo, London School of Economics, 1994. _______. “Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid.” European Economic Review,

1996, 40(2), pp. 289–329. Burnside, Craig and Dollar, David. “Aid, Policies, and Growth.” American Economic

Review, September 2000, 90(4), pp. 847–68. Bush, George W. Speech at Inter-American Development Bank. Washington, DC,

March 16, 2002. Cassen, Robert. Does Aid Work? Report to an Intergovernmental Task Force. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). World Factbook 2002. Washington, DC: 2002. Chang, Charles C.; Fernandez-Arias, Eduardo and Serven, Luis. “Measuring Aid Flows:

A New Approach.” Inter-American Development Bank (Washington, DC) Working Paper No. 387, December 1998.

Collier, Paul and Dehn, Jan. “Aid, Shocks, and Growth.” World Bank (Washington, DC)

Working Paper 2688, October 2001. Collier, Paul and Dollar, David. “Aid Allocation and Poverty Reduction.” European

Economic Review, September 2002, 45(1), pp. 1–26. Currency Data International (CDI), Global Currency Report. Brooklyn, NY: various

years. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan and Hansen, Henrik. “On Aid, Growth and Good Policies.”

Journal of Development Studies, August 2001, 37(6), pp. 17–41. Development Assistance Committee Online. Paris: Development Assistance Committee

(DAC), 2002. Easterly, William and Levine, Ross. “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Politics and Ethnic

Divisions.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1997, 112(4), pp. 1203–50.

Global Development Network. Growth Database. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001.

http://www.worldbank.org/research/growth/GDNdata.htm

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Guillaumont, Patrick and Chauvet, Lisa. “Aid and Performance: A Reassessment.” Journal of Development Studies, August 2001, 37(6), pp. 66–92.

Hansen, Henrik and Tarp, Finn. “Aid Effectiveness Disputed.” Journal of International

Development, April 2000, 12(3), pp. 375–98. _______. “Aid and Growth Regressions.” Journal of Development Economics, April

2001, 64(2), pp. 547–70. International Currency Analysts (ICA), Black Market Premia. Brooklyn, NY: various

months. International Monetary Fund (IMF). International Financial Statistics database.

Washington, DC: July 2002. Knack, Stephen and Keefer, Philip. “Institutions and Economic Performance:

Cross-Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures.” Economics and Politics, November 1995, 7(3), pp. 207–27.

Lensink, Robert and White, Howard. “Are There Negative Returns to Aid?” Journal of

Development Studies, August 2001 37(6), pp. 42–65. Mosley, Paul; Hudson, John and Horrell, Sara. “Aid, the Public Sector and the Market in

Less Developed Countries.” Economic Journal, September 2001, 97(387), pp. 616–41.

Papanek, Gustav F. “The Effect of Aid and Other Resource Transfers on Savings and

Growth in Less Developed Countries,” Economic Journal, September 1972, 82(327), pp. 934–50.

Summers, Robert and Heston, Alan. “The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set

of International Comparisons, 1950–88.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1991, 106(2), pp. 327–68.

U.K. Department for International Development. Eliminating World Poverty: Making

Globalisation Work for the Poor. White Paper on International Development Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for International Development by Command of Her Majesty. London: December 2000.

White House. Fact sheet on Millennium Challenge Account. Washington, DC: 2002,

www.whitehouse.gov U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Trade Information and

Analysis (TRAINS) database. Geneva: Spring 2001.

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U.S. Department of State, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers. Washington, DC: various years.

World Bank. Adjustment in Africa: Reforms, Results, and the Road Ahead. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1994. _______. Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy.

Washington, DC: 2002a. _______. A Case for Aid: Building a Consensus for Development Assistance. Washington

DC: 2002b. ________. World Development Indicators 2002 database. Washington, DC: 2002c.

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Appendix: Data set construction (Data posted at www.cgdev.org) In assembling a new data set for the present study, we imitated as closely as possible the process followed by BD, consulting also the authors (although they are of course not responsible for any errors we make). We collected all data available from standard cross-country sources. We also collected new data on black market premium. (See Table A–1.) The BD and new data sets differ somewhat. Each contains observations for certain variables that the other lacks, and the two do not agree perfectly on overlaps. (See Table A–2.) BD have some observations that we were not able to reproduce for 1970-93 with our more recent data sources, perhaps because data was reclassified as missing in subsequent updates. Table A–1. Construction of data set

Variable Code

Correlation with BD1

Data source Notes2

Per-capita GDP growth

GDPG 0.962 World Bank 2002c

Initial GDP per capita

LGDP 1.000 Summers and Heston 1991, updated using GDPG

Natural logarithm of GDP/capita for first year of period; constant 1985 dollars

Ethnic fractionalization

ETHNF 1.000 Easterly and Levine 1997

Probability that two individuals will belong to different ethnic groups; based on original Soviet data

Assassinations ASSAS 1.000 Banks 2002 Institutional quality

ICRGE 0.897 PRS Group’s IRIS III data set (see Knack and Keefer 1995)

Based on 1982 values, the earliest available. BD say they use 1980 values. Computed as the average of five variables

M2/GDP, lagged one period

M2–1 0.967 World Bank 2002c

Sub-Saharan Africa

SSA 1.000 World Bank 2002c Codes nations in the southern Sahara as sub-Saharan

East Asia EASIA 1.000 Dummy for China, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.only

Budget surplus BB 0.918 World Bank 2002c; IMF 2002

World Bank primary data source. Additional values

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extrapolated from IMF, using series 80 and 99b (local-currency budget surplus and GDP)

Inflation INFL 1.000 World Bank 2002c Natural logarithm of 1 + inflation rate

Black market premium

LBMP BD do not use data on

BMP because

they take the Sachs-

Warner openness measure directly

Global Development Network database for all years expect 1994-95; black market exchange rate for 1994-95 from ICA, various editions; CDI, various editions; official exchange rate from IMF 2002

.Natural logarithm of 1+ black market premium

Sachs-Warner, updated

SACW 0.962 See Table A-4 below Based on variables described in Table A-4. Extended to 1998. Slightly revised pre-1993

Aid (Effective Development Assistance)/ GDP

AID 0.953 Chang et al. 1998; IMF 2002; DAC 2002

Values available from Chang et al. for 1975–95. Values for 1970–74, 1996–97, extrapolated based on correlation of EDA with Net ODA. Converted to 1985 dollars with World Import Unit Value index from IMF 2002, series 75. GDP computed like LGDP above

Population LPOP 1.000 World Bank 2002c Natural logarithm Arms imports/total imports lagged

ARMS-1 0.986 U.S. Department of State, various years

Underlying source of World Bank 2002, which BD use

1For four-year aggregates, restricted within the 275 complete observations in BD. 2All variables aggregated over time using arithmetic averages.

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Table A–2. Differences in Sample between Burnside and Dollar and New Data Set Burnside and Dollar New Data Set Observations unique to set

Brazil 1970–73, 1974–77 Algeria 1970–73, 1974–77 Gambia 1986–89 Guyana 1970–73, 1974–77,

1978–81, 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93

Somalia 1974–77, 1978–81 Tanzania 1982–85, 1986–89 Zambia 1970–73, 1974–77,

1978–81, 1982–85

Argentina 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Botswana 1974–77, 1990–93 Burkina Faso 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Congo, Dem. Rep. 1990–93, 1990–93 Cote d’Ivoire 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Ethiopia 1990–93 Haiti 1990–93 Iran 1978–81, 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Jamaica 1990–93 Jordan 1974–77, 1978–81, 1982–85, 1986–89,

1990–93 Mali 1990–93 Myanmar 1970–73, 1974–77, 1978–81,

1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Papua New Guinea 1978–81, 1982–85,

1986–89, 1990–93 Togo 1990–93 Trinidad and Tobago 1990–93 Turkey 1970–73, 1974–77, 1978–81, 1982–85,

1986–89 Uganda 1982–85, 1986–89, 1990–93 Zimbabwe 1978–81

Observations for 1994–97

None Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Number of observations

275 356

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Table A-3: Outliers Excluded from Regressions Regressions Outliers BD data, BD sample, 1970–93 Gambia 1986-89, 1990-93

Guyana 1990-1993 Nicaragua 1986-89, 1990-93

new data set, BD country sample, 1970–93 Gabon 1974-77 Gambia 1990-93, Mali 1990-93 Nicaragua 1986-89, 1990-93 Zambia 1990-93

new data set, full sample, 1970–97 Brazil 1986-89,1990-93 Gabon 1974-77 Gambia 1990-93 Guyana 1994-97 Jordan 1974-77, 1978-81 Nicaragua 1986-89, 1990-93 Zambia 1990-93, 1994-97

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Updating the Sachs-Warner openness variable

The set of Sachs-Warner values from Harvard’s Center for International Development stops in 1992. In order to extend the study period, we updated the Sachs-Warner (1995) openness variable for 1993–98 for those countries with otherwise complete observations for 1994–97, and for some other countries. The process of updating also led us to revise pre-1993 values for ten countries. The Sachs-Warner variable is based principally on five components. When a country is rated “closed” on any one of the components, it is rated closed overall. Sachs and Warner also drew on other sources on an ad hoc basis. Table A–4 describes the five components and how they were updated for countries in the present study. Table A–4. Synopsis of update to Sachs-Warner Component Updating method Black market premium > 20 percent

Global Development Network database for all years expect 1994-95; black market exchange rate for 1994-95 from ICA, various editions; CDI, various editions; official exchange rate from IMF 2002. Algeria, Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria rated closed through 1998. Ethiopia rated closed 1993–96. Kenya and Uganda rated closed 1993–94. Zambia rated closed 1993 and 1998.

Export marketing: “closed” if government has a purchasing monopoly on a major export crop and delinks purchase prices from international prices. Sub-Saharan Africa only.

Based on late-1992 status from World Bank 1994, p. 239, and on late-1990’s IMF country reports. Absence of evidence in IMF documents of such intervention is interpreted as evidence of absence. Cameroon and Republic of Congo rated open 1993–98. Madagascar rated open 1997–98. All other countries in present study unchanged since 1992.

Socialist Based on CIA 2002. Republic of Congo rated non-socialist 1991–97 but socialist in 1998. Ethiopia rated non-socialist 1992–98. Nicaragua rated non-socialist for 1991–98. All other countries in study unchanged since 1992.

Own-imported-weighted average frequency of non-tariff measures (licenses, prohibitions, and quotas) on capital goods and intermediates > 0.4

Single estimates for late 1990’s derived from UNCTAD 2001. Data year for imports: 1999. Data year for non-tariff measures: varies by country, between 1992 and 2000, mostly late-1990’s. Only Argentina, Bangladesh, China, and India rated closed.

Own-imported-weighted average tariff on capital goods and intermediates > 0.4

Single estimates for late 1990’s derived from UNCTAD 2001. Only Pakistan rated closed.

18