Save the poor, shoot some bankers

Abstract

Bilateral or multilateral organizations control about 90% of official overseas development assistance (ODA), much of which is wasted. This note traces aid failure to the daisy chain of principal-agent-beneficiary relationships linking rich donors to aid bureaucrats to poor recipients. Waste results when aid middlemen (un)intentionally misdirect ODA. Waste can be reduced by clarifying domestic goals for ODA, using fewer middlemen with greater intrinsic motivation, empowering recipients, and/or replacing bureaucracy with markets.

Donors’ Interest in Water and Sanitation Subsectors

“…Zetland ( 2010 ) highlights the fact that although the ODA increased during the last decade, monitoring the results and the feedback by donors is not covered enough with respect to the politics, where allocating ODA plays a part in interfering with domestic politics. The responsibility for safe access to water and sanitation within the individual country is a shared responsibility.…”

Desalination and the commons: tragedy or triumph?

“…This presentation may reflect the median citizen's preferences if the resulting nPv is positive and losers are compensated, but -as Scitovszky (1941) pointed out in his criticism of this Kaldor-Hicks criterion for efficiency -losers are not always compensated. It is thus common for special interests to benefit when policies skew the allocation of common-pooled costs and benefits (Acemoglu & verdier, 2000;Kaufmann, 2005;Transparency International, 2008;Wallis, 2004;Zetland, 2010). Taking such a mismatch as given, it is likely to be problematic for politicians if citizens believe that excess costs are falling on them (Thorndike, 2006).…”

“…Although a politician might argue that such distortions serve the greater good -e.g. by helping citizens accept useful but complex ideas they may not have the time or ability to understand -one might just as easily argue that the distortions serve politicians' selfish interests (Hall, 2000;Zetland, 2010).…”

Team effectiveness in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) projects

“…Industrial and commercial projects may have two key stakeholders-the client, who is the financial sponsor of the project and the implementing partner. Developmental projects are delivered by sponsors under varied forms of funding and collaboration, for instance through bilateral agreements with recipient governments or through a "middlemen" -normally a non-governmental organization (NGO) (Crawford & Bryce, 2003;Zetland, 2010). They therefore involve the funding agency, the implementing unit, and the target beneficiaries who benefit from the project outputs but most commonly do not pay for the projects i-e the community or the society.…”