Aid, Policy, and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies
Countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil w...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/10/2032624/aid-policy-growth-post-conflict-societies http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19220 |
| Summary: | Countries emerging from civil war
attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the
first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform
in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a
comprehensive data set of large civil wars and covers 27
countries that were in their first decade of post-conflict
economic recovery during the 1990s. The authors first
investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is
systematically different in post-conflict countries. They
find that during the first three post-conflict years,
absorptive capacity is no greater than normal, but that in
the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its
normal level. So ideally, aid should phase in during the
decade. Historically, aid has not, on average, been higher
in post-conflict societies, and it has tended to taper out
over the course of the decade. The authors then investigate
whether the contribution of policy to growth is
systematically different in post-conflict countries, and in
particular, whether particular components of policy are
differentially important. For this they use the World Bank
policy rating database. The authors find that growth is more
sensitive to policy in post-conflict societies. Comparing
the efficacy of different policies, they find that social
policies are differentially important relative to
macroeconomic policies. However, historically, this does not
appear to have been how policy reform has been prioritized
in post-conflict societies. |
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