Recipient Countries’ Financial Development and the Effectiveness of ODA

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effectiveness of Offcial Development Assistance (ODA) in recipient countries' economy. ODA is designed to mitigate poverty and stimulate economic growth in the developing countries. We classify total ODA into bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA depending on the number of donor countries. If the ODA flows from one donor country to one recipient country, it is classified as bilateral ODA. If the multiple countries simultaneously become donor countries through the international organizations such as United Nations and World Bank, it is classified as multilateral ODA. This paper compares the effect of bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA in determining recipient countries' economic development, and tries to provide policy implications to Korean ODA. Research design, data, and methodology - Our primary explanatory variables are bilateral and multilateral ODA. Private credit in recipient countries is adopted as additional explanatory variables to capture the level of financial development in recipient countries. We measure the ODA effectiveness using economic growth and quality of life of the recipient countries as the dependent variable. We collect 142 recipient countries' data from OECD statistics, during the period from 1970-2014. Panel least squares estimation with country fixed effect is employed as the empirical model. Results - Our results support that ODA variable has a negatively significant impact on recipient countries' economic growth, while it is positively correlated with human development index. Recipient countries' private credit is positively correlated with economic growth and human development index. The interaction variable of ODA and financial development turns out to be significant in general. We find that the positive effect of ODA depends on recipient countries' financial market development and this effect is stronger in multilateral aid than bilateral one. Conclusions - From the analysis, we have confirmed that the recipient countries financial development is the necessity condition to achieve positive effect of ODA. Based on these results, we suggest that Korean government should increase the share of multilateral funding and pay attention to recipient countries' financial market development to maximize the effectiveness of ODA.