Do Development Minister Characteristics Affect Aid Giving?

Abstract

Abstract:Over 300 government members have had the main responsibility for international development cooperation in 23 member countries of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee since the organization started reporting detailed Official Development Assistance (ODA) data in 1967.Understanding their role in foreign aid giving is crucial since their decisions might directly impact aid effectiveness and thus economic development on the ground. Our study examines whether development ministers' personal characteristics influence aid budgets and aid quality. To this end, we create a novel database on development ministers' gender, political ideology, prior professional experience in development cooperation, education in economics, and time in office over the 1967-2012 period. Results from fixed-effects panel regressions show that some of the personal characteristics of development ministers matter. Most notably, we find that more experienced ministers with respect to their time in office obtain larger aid budgets. Moreover, there is evidence that female ministers as well as officeholders with prior professional experience in development cooperation and a longer time in office provide higher-quality ODA.JEL classification: D78, F35, H11, O19

Gender equality in politics at home and promotion of gender equality in politics abroad: The role of bilateral official development assistance

“…Other studies have also examined whether female political representation in donor countries matters in allocating ODA. They use percentages of women in parliament (Breuning, 2001: 47; Hicks et al, 2016), female development ministers (Kleemann et al, 2016), or both (Dreher et al, 2015; Fuchs and Richert, 2015) as proxies and report mixed findings. These studies assume that: (a) female politicians have different policy preferences; and (b) the impact of women’s political representation on policies grows with the increase in women’s numerical representation.…”