African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance

Dreher, Axel; Fuchs, Andreas; Hodler, Roland; Parks, Bradley C.; Raschky, Paul A.; Tierney, Michael J.

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.04.003

Cited by 189 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Importantly for this paper, political preferencing is also a determinant of aid flows and may result in inefficient aid allocation, which would subsequently alter aid interventions, outcomes, and impact [11]. Further, some aid sectors may be more vulnerable to political preferencing than others, creating differential adverse impacts across sectors downstream.…”

Section: Political Preferencing/governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the conceptual model, economic resources (e.g., mines, oil/gas, ports) are included to control for the claim that Chinese aid is driven by an interest in accessing natural resources [11,23]. Chinese financing to Africa has been linked to the controversial "Angola Model" where China provides low interest loans to countries that rely on commodities, such as oil, minerals, and gas [24].…”

Section: Donor Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This research will test the hypothesis that the disproportionate aid allocation to the birth regions of the current African political leaders that Dreher et al [11] found applies to some sectors more than others. This may be due to the nature of a given sector and whether it is more susceptible to pressure to be effective and/or to other forms of oversight.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Dreher et al found that Chinese aid leads to "political preferencing". A dataset covering 1,650 Chinese development projects from 2000 to 2012 showed that when leaders hold power their birth regions receive substantially more Chinese aid flows than other subnational regions [11]. This suggests that Chinese aid flows are susceptible to manipulation, a phenomenon that may not occur if China was bound to the same transparency principles as OECD member countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current study examines political preferencing in China by aid sector, following other studies that take a sector specific approach to understanding aid allocation in China [14][15][16]. Aggregate analyses such as Dreher et al's, illuminated an alarming phenomenon [11]. However, such aggregate analyses ignore the fact that China's aid system has traditionally been fragmented in both funding and in management, and therefore lacked a unified cross-sector strategy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Pulling the purse strings: Are there sectoral differences in political preferencing of Chinese aid to Africa?

Dolan¹,

McDade²

2020

PLoS ONE

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Objective China is emerging as an increasingly important player in the global development space, but may be less bound to compacts that aim to curb political preferencing and therefore may produce less yield in terms of impact toward Sustainable Development Goals. This research tests the hypothesis that the disproportionate aid allocation to the birth regions of the current African political leaders that applies to some sectors more than others. Design We applied a two-part model to first estimate the probability that a region receives an aid project. Then when at least one aid project is present in a leader's birth region, we estimated the mean amount of aid the region received. Setting This analysis covers 699 subnational units (first administrative level) across 44 African countries over 2000-2014. These administrative units were compiled into a region year panel resulting in 10,485 observations. Results Birth regions of the current political leader are significantly more likely than the average of all of the regions to receive education (1.3 percentage points), social infrastructure and services (1.2 percentage points), and energy aid (1.7 percentage points). No significant association was found between aid flows to the birth region of the current political leader in the agriculture, communication, education, government, health or transportation sectors. Within the education sector, the coefficients for birth region are positive in both parts and statistically significant. Both the probability of aid allocation and the amount of aid conditional on any projects increase in the birth region of the current political leader.

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Section: Political Preferencing/governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Donor Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Pulling the purse strings: Are there sectoral differences in political preferencing of Chinese aid to Africa?

Dolan¹,

McDade²

2020

PLoS ONE

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The impact of Chinese aid on political trust

Atitianti

2022

J of Intl Development

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This paper examines whether Chinese aid impacts citizens' trust in government by matching geocoded data on Chinese aid projects located in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) between 2000 and 2014 to respondents from rounds 3 to 6 of Afrobarometer survey. Implementing an instrumental variable (IV) estimation to control for the potential endogeneity of aid, this paper finds robust evidence that Chinese aid reduces trust in government. The decline in trust seems to be because the aid projects stimulate poor assessments of government performance and perceptions that government officials are involved in corrupt activities. Replication analysis reveals that World Bank projects are no different and also reduce trust in government. Consequently, these findings reignite concerns about the unintended consequences of aid and the need to adopt implementation approaches that mitigate unintended adverse outcomes.

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Chinese aid and crime: Evidence from Africa

Appiah-Kubi

Jarrett

2023

J of Intl Development

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We study how the allocation of resources impacts localised crime rates. Recent studies on the effects of Chinese aid in Africa have increased rapidly, and this paper contributes by showing the mechanism by which aid increases crime. Using a geo‐referenced dataset of subnational allocation of Chinese projects, geographically matched with 145 701 respondents of four rounds of Afrobarometer surveys from 36 African countries, we use a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐difference (DDD) approach and an instrumental variable (IV) identification strategy to account for endogeneity and capture the effect of living near projects under implementation before or after a survey against those with no projects. We find that Chinese aid projects significantly increased crime rates in the immediate locations where the projects were implemented. The main channel of effect is the increased local economic activities leading to the availability of employable opportunities. There is a similar but smaller magnitude of the effect regarding projects funded by other donor agencies.

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African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance

Cited by 189 publications

References 74 publications

Pulling the purse strings: Are there sectoral differences in political preferencing of Chinese aid to Africa?

Pulling the purse strings: Are there sectoral differences in political preferencing of Chinese aid to Africa?

The impact of Chinese aid on political trust

Chinese aid and crime: Evidence from Africa

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