Official Development Aid Research Articles

Лаос в потоках международной помощи развитию

Since the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) in 1975, the development of the country has been uneven both due to domestic policy deficiencies as well as changing international environment. The aim of the article is to provide an overview of the domestic situation in the Lao PDR in connection with the position of the country at the world arena from the 1970s up to date. The study is based on the country-specific research issued abroad in the 1990s-2000s as well as individual papers provided by Russian authors in the 2000s. The sources used for the study include the World Bank and the UN agencies data as well as information from specialized bodies dealing with development including the USAID and the EEAS. The peculiarities of the political system attributed to the Lao PRD include one-party rule, state dominance on most spheres of life and high level of corruption. The economy of the country used to suffer from the land-locked character but nowadays the country strives to gain advantage from being a transit territory in the Mekong River region. Due to sharp turns in the state economic policy from nationalization and collectivization to market orientation, the economy has been rather weak. The efforts to make tourism one of the drivers of economic development along with mining, hydropower production and agriculture, were devalued by the pandemic. The opportunities for receiving education in the country are especially limited for the poor, representatives of ethnic minorities, and women. Due to the continuing growth of the population, it may become even more difficult to provide education in the country largely. The healthcare system is also understaffed and underfunded. Malnutrition is wide-spread among the poor population. However, the healthcare system has improved a lot during the last 30 years. Many social problems of the country are not duly solved partially due to large state deficit that is somehow balanced by foreign aid. Laos was acknowledged a least developed country (LDC) in 1971. Thus, Laos relied a lot on foreign aid. The volumes of official development aid provided to the Lao PDR by the OECD Development Assistance Committee in 1971-2020 changed a lot due to the changes in the main donors of development aid from France and the US at the beginning of the 1970s, then the Soviet Union and Socialist bloc countries in 1975-1990, then again Western states, Japan, UN agencies gaining the main donor position for the Lao PDR. Countering poverty and other social problems were declared the priorities for both Lao authorities and international aid donors, certain success was achieved: the average poverty rate has decreased, the GDP per capita has been growing, the public debt remained large, though. Since the country is expected to be deprived of the LDC status in 2026 due to achieving relatively good results, it is time for the Lao PDR to reformulate its domestic and foreign policy approaches.

Determinants of Large Shifts in Official Development Aid Allocation by Major Countries

This study provides a comparative analysis of the main determinants of large shifts in aid allocation by major donors, namely China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In contrast to continuing assistance, significant year-over-year variation of allocated aid to a given recipient is considered a new and deliberate decision by the donors. Using a version of quantile regression to account for heterogeneity in the characteristics of aid recipients, we show that significant differences exist in the aid allocation strategies of the major donors. There is no conditionality attached to Chinese aid, while self-economic interests and corruption levels at home and in the recipient countries determine aid allocated by France and the U.K. to their former colonies. In addition, recipient needs affect aid from France, the U.K., and the U.S. Over the 2000-2014 period, there is no significant change in the determinants of aid allocation by China in response to various criticisms of its approach. Confronted with the growing influence of emerging donors such as China, the three major traditional donors seem to adjust their aid allocation policy towards their own economic interests.

СВІТОВИЙ ДОСВІД ФІНАНСУВАННЯ ГАЛУЗІ ОСВІТИ В УМОВАХ ВОЄННОГО СТАНУ

Adequate financing of education is necessary to maintain an efficient system and provide high quality education. The armed conflicts have a negative impact on economic development, as a result, the available resources become limited. Usually, the education sector is not a priority for financing, but educating the population remains important. The purpose of our article is to determine the best practices of funding the education sector during wars and armed conflicts. Our analysis of the impact of the wars and armed conflicts on the economic development of the parties involved showed that the lack of funds leads to the reallocation of the government expenditures towards military and defense sectors, usually at the expense of others, including education. It has been established that the impact of armed conflicts on the financing of the education sector is determined by several factors, in particular, the drop in economic growth rates, the disruption of trade relations, and the reallocation of expenditures from other sectors to defense and the army. This means that the state requires external help to finance educational sector. Globalization caused the growing interdependence of the national economies, so the neighbor countries are particularly interested in resolving that conflict and supporting the afflicted party. As such the interna­tional community created a program to support education development in emergencies (including natural disasters, wars, armed conflicts etc.) and practical recommendations for their implementation. There are several parts of the program for different scenarios including creating temporary facilities to provide preschool and school education, and relocation of the children (including abroad) for the purposes of subsequent repatriation or integration. As a result, the external support includes official development aid (financing the education sector of the recipient) and providing aid to the refugees. It has been established that at the moment only 29 countries are donors of the official development assistance in the field of education, and most of it is provided by 5 countries. On the other hand, most of developed countries have established practices to provide help for education of the migrants and refugees.

Teach me to fish instead of giving me fish: Foreign development aid and employment in Africa

This paper aims to verify the effect of Official Development Assistance (ODA) on employment in Africa, considering sectoral employment and sub-regional groupings. The data is collected for 37 African countries between the 1996 to 2019 periods. The methodology involves the fixed effect, random effect, the Feasible Generalised Least Square (FGLS), and the Driscoll/Kraay estimators. The results reveal that official development aid harms employment in Africa. Looking at sectoral employment, we found a positive effect of aid on agricultural employment, a negative effect on industrial employment, and a non-significant positive effect on service employment. The effect of aid on agricultural employment is significantly augmenting in East Africa, and that on industrial employment is negatively significant in East, North, and Southern Africa. On the other hand, service employment is negatively and positively significant in East Africa and North Africa, respectively. Given the heterogeneity of the results across different regions, employment policies should be elaborated based on the specificities of each region.

African Asylum Seekers in Europe: The Interplay between Foreign Aid and Governance in Origin Countries

This paper empirically investigates the effects of governance quality on the number of African asylum seekers in Europe over the period 1996–2018 and evaluates the extent to which official development aid acts as a catalyst. With this purpose in mind, different gravity model specifications and estimation approaches have been employed. The obtained results suggest that the asylum flows are strongly determined by governance quality in the country of origin and that this effect does depend on the amount of foreign aid received from developed countries. Moreover, it is also found that development aid is only effective in reducing asylum applications coming from countries with good governance. Moreover, we find no differences in the estimated elasticity of foreign aid on asylum claims for the beneficiaries of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF) for Africa, the main aim of which has been to improve living conditions of potential migrants in their countries of origin.

AID FOR TRADE FLOWS AND POVERTY REDUCTION

The effectiveness of Aid for Trade (AfT) interventions, including with respect to recipient countries’ trade performance, has now been well explored in the literature. However, in spite of the voluminous literature on the poverty effect of the total official development aid, the effect of AfT flows on poverty has received little attention on the empirical front. This paper aims to contribute to the policy debate on this matter by investigating the effect of AfT flows on poverty in recipient countries. In particular, the analysis explores whether this effect translates through countries’ level of export product concentration, as the latter can influence income inequality, and hence the transformation of economic growth into poverty reduction in recipient countries. The empirical analysis, based on 100[Formula: see text]AfT recipient countries, has shown that AfT interventions are associated with poverty reduction in countries that diversify their export products, including toward manufacturing products. Additionally, AfT flows dampen the positive poverty effect of income inequality, and lead to greater poverty reduction in countries with a great extent of fiscal redistribution. Finally, the analysis has shown that AfT interventions mitigate the positive poverty effect of import product concentration. These results have important policy implications.

Pacific Step-Up: Exploring Geopolitical Accountability for Aid in Solomon Islands

ABSTRACT Pacific Island Countries (PICs) commonly rely on intergovernmental Official Development Aid (ODA) to assist with social and environmental challenges. Therefore, how national governments are accountable for these commitments is an important issue for donors and recipients. This study investigates the donor side of this relationship by exploring Australia’s ODA relationship with Solomon Islands through its recent Pacific Step-up programme. Given the geographic closeness and history between Australia and Solomon Islands, we adopt critical geopolitics as a framework to inform the analysis. We find that the two common metaphors, family and step-up, are evidence of Australia’s accountability relationship with Solomon Islands; while the concept of tug-of-war explains the background and rising geopolitical anxiety between two regional powers, Australia and China. This study extends our understanding of aid accountability within a novel intergovernmental environment and offers an alternative explanation rooted in a politics of power.

محددات تخصیص المساعدات العربیة للدول الأفریقیة: استخدام أسلوب تحلیل الانحدار خلال الفترة 2013-2018

على الرغم من وجود کثير من الدراسات التي قامت بتحليل محددات تخصيص المساعدات الأجنبية- سواء من قبل دول منظمة التعاون الاقتصادي والتنمية أو بعض الوکالات التابعة للأمم المتحدة- إلا أنه يندر وجود دراسات قدمت تحليلا منهجيا لتخصيص المساعدات الأجنبية بشکل عام والعربية بشکل خاص. وما هو موجود من الأدبيات لا يجيب عن التساؤل الخاص بالعوامل التي تؤثر في توزيع هذه المساعدات على الدول المتلقية. وتهدف هذه الورقة إلى التعرف على محددات تخصيص المساعدات العربية للدول الأفريقية من خلال تحليل الانحدار باستخدام طريقة المربعات الصغرى لأربع جهات مانحة عربية وباستخدام Panel Data خلال الفترة من 2013 وحتى 2018، وباستخدام صافي المساعدات الإنمائية الرسمية کمتغير تابع، ومجموعة من المتغيرات المستقلة التي تشمل متغيرات تعکس خصائص وحاجة الدول الأفريقية المتلقية للمساعدات، ومتغيرات تعکس مصلحة الجهات المانحة العربية. وقد توصلت الورقة إلى أن محددات تخصيص المساعدات العربية وإن کانت في مجملها تتأثر بمصلحة الجهات المانحة العربية أکثر من حاجة الدول المتلقية، إلا أنها تختلف من جهة مانحة إلى أخرى. فقد أظهرت نتائج تحليل الانحدار أن المصلحة الاقتصادية، والتحيز العربي، وعلاقة الدول المتلقية مع إسرائيل محددات رئيسية في تخصيص مساعدات الإمارات وصندوق الأوبک للتنمية الاقتصادية، کما اتضح أن عدد سکان الدولة المتلقية يعد محددا رئيسيا في تخصيص المساعدات الکويتية. أظهرت النتائج أيضا أن هناک تحيزا عربيا في تخصيص المساعدات السعودية، وأما عن الخصائص المؤسسية للدول المتلقية فقد اتضح أن مستوى الشفافية الذي تتمتع به الدولة المتلقية محدد رئيسي لتخصيص مساعدات صندوق الأوبک للتنمية الاقتصادية. Although there are many studies that have analyzed the determinants of the allocation of foreign aid, whether by the OECD countries or some agencies of the United Nations, there are few studies that have provided a systematic analysis of the allocation of foreign aid in general and Arab aid in particular. What is available from the literature does not answer the question about the factors that affect the distribution of this aid to the recipient countries. This paper aims to identify the determinants of allocating Arab aid to African countries through regression analysis using the least squares method for four Arab donors and using Panel Data during the period from 2013 to 2018, using net official development aid as a dependent variable, and a set of independent variables that include variables that reflect Characteristics and needs of African countries receiving aid, and variables that reflect the interest of Arab donors. The paper concluded that the determinants of the allocation of Arab aid, although in its entirety, are affected by the interests of Arab donors more than the needs of the recipient countries, but they differ from one donor to another. The results of the regression analysis showed that the economic interest, the Arab bias, and the relationship of the recipient countries with Israel are major determinants of the allocation of the UAE aid and the OPEC Fund for Economic Development, and it became clear that the population of the recipient country is a major determinant in the allocation of Kuwaiti aid. The results also showed that there is an Arab bias in the allocation of Saudi aid, and as for the institutional characteristics of the recipient countries, it became clear that the level of transparency enjoyed by the recipient country is a major determinant of allocating the OPEC Fund for Economic Development aid.

Global economic fluctuations and human development: how is the impact transmitted in Egypt?

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between global economic fluctuations and human development through four transmission channels (foreign direct investment (FDI), official development aid (ODA), remittances and export earnings) in Egypt as an open developing economy, in the period 1990–2015. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a vector autoregressive model, which implies examining the impulse response functions and variance decompositions. Findings The results indicate that human development is negatively affected by global economic fluctuations through the four channels, namely, ODA, FDI, export earnings and remittances. In addition, the most effective transmission channels are FDI in the short run and export earnings in the long run. Originality/value While a large body of literature addresses the direct impact of business cycles and economic shocks on human development, only some studies focus on the indirect impact. The contribution is to identify the indirect impact of global economic fluctuations on human development in a developing economy, considering four transmission channels and to determine the most important of these channels. Moreover, using the human development index is an addition in this paper as most previous literature depends on other human development indicators such as children’s health, employment and schooling.

Financial liberalization, remittances and economic growth in Nigeria (1990–2018)

PurposeInternational remittances are an important segment of external financial flows in Nigeria, currently superseding official development aid (ODA) in terms of volume, and foreign direct investment (FDI) in terms of stability. This study is motivated by the recent increase in remittance flows in Nigeria as the highest recipient in West Africa, and the fact that the growth impact of remittances is weak within the country. The financial liberalization index developed by Chinn and Ito (2006) is employed in this study to examine the role of financial liberalization in the remittances-growth nexus in Nigeria over the period 1990–2018.Design/methodology/approachTo address the possibility of endogeneity among the variables in the model, the study employs the generalized method of moments (GMM) as a technique of analysis.FindingsRemittances and financial liberalization are found to have negative significant impacts on economic growth. However, the effect of the interaction term of financial liberalization and remittances on economic growth is positive and significant. This suggests that the two variables act as complements in the enhancement of economic growth in Nigeria. The study thus concludes that financial liberalization is a strong transmission channel through which remittance inflows positively affect economic growth in Nigeria. The study also advocates for a well-developed financial sector in order to attract more growth-enhancing remittances into the country.Research limitations/implicationsThe implication of the research findings is that an unrestrained financial sector is necessary to encourage and optimize the benefits of remittance flows on economic growth in Nigeria.Originality/valuePrevious studies have considered the effects of financial development on the remittances-growth nexus in Nigeria. However, this study examines the role of financial liberalization in the nexus between remittances and economic growth in Nigeria by using the Chinn and Ito (2008) index of financial openness.

ВЗАЄМОЗАЛЕЖНІСТЬ МІЖ ОФІЦІЙНОЮ ДОПОМОГОЮ РОЗВИТКУ ТА МАКРОЕКОНОМІЧНИМИ ПОКАЗНИКАМИ КРАЇН ІЗ РИНКАМИ, ЩО ФОРМУЮТЬСЯ

International development aid is the voluntary transfer of funds in the form of goods, skills, grants, credits and loans, training, exchange of experience from donor countries to recipients of these funds. Alongside with the aid in the traditional sense, other factors are also important, such as trade, migration, investment, environment, security, technology, i.e., everything that constitutes the development strategy and has a significant impact on it. Official development aid is aimed at rebuilding infrastructure, institutions and promoting the economic development of countries, which is a key part of post-war peace agreements. Official development aid (ODA) increases investment in physical and human capital, the ability to import capital goods or technology. ODA does not have indirect effects that reduce investment rates or savings, but is associated with the transfer of technologies that increase capital productivity and promote endogenous technical changes. Among a wide range of funding sources, official development aid plays an important role. It helps launch projects in underdeveloped or underfunded sectors or domains. ODA initiates processes of "virtuous development" and creates favourable dynamics that can help involve all other parties, especially business representatives, in such projects. This creates a multiplier effect that multiplies the impact. It was discovered during the research that official development aid increases investment in physical and human capital, the ability to import capital goods or technology. ODA does not have indirect effects that reduce investment rates or savings but relates to the transfer of technologies that increase capital productivity and promote endogenous technical changes. A study of the impact of official development aid on economic growth and poverty in the 20 countries studied showed that in most countries there was a negative correlation between the indicators of official development aid and gross domestic product, only a few countries showed a positive relationship between the two variables at a high level. The same situation can be observed between ODA and the poverty line. The relationship between the two variables that are not related to the provision of official development aid shows the best result, but ODA does not affect them. This analysis confirmed the theoretical and empirical research of scientists in this field on the lack of connection or weak connection between the studied variables. However, Student's t-test analysis indicates that there is a close relationship between GDP and ODA, as confirmed by the results of the study.

The Rise of Self-Interests: How Shifting Political Goals Changed the Effectiveness of Dutch Official Development Aid to Bangladesh From 2005 Until 2016

Aid effectiveness has been situated in the central debate of development studies and, particularly, among foreign aid policy making community. As the Netherlands was one of the unique countries which focused extensively on the needs of its recipient, it is important to investigate the Netherlands’ recent practice of its development aid, particularly to Bangladesh and the associated goal ambiguity. This article attempts to answer the question, “to what extent does goal ambiguity in Dutch development aid affect the effectiveness of Dutch development aid given to Bangladesh?” This analysis is based on independent assessments of Dutch official development aid (ODA) to Bangladesh and Dutch coalition agreements in 2005-2010 and 2011-2016. This study finds that, in the second period, goal ambiguity has increased, while the aid effectiveness has decreased. This change is unlikely to be attributed to the conditions for aid effectiveness since these remained largely stable or even in slightly in favour of the second period. While the comparison of different sectors between timeframes lacks full robustness, there is direct evidence that goal ambiguity has played a role in lower effectiveness in the water related aid in the second period. Therefore, this study suggests that aid effectiveness in Bangladesh has decreased in the period 2011 to 2016 due to an increase in goal ambiguity caused by increasing self-interests in Dutch ODA policy.

Influence of Sector, Budget Size and Financing on Time and Cost Management of Czech International Development Projects

Research background: This article focuses on the official Czech international development (ID) aid and the factors affecting the project success in terms of cost and time variance from the plan. As per research by Ahsan and Gunawan (2010), ID projects by Asian Development Bank are finalised within their budget, however, with delays, and the result depends on the developing country. Previous article written by the author confirmed the findings also for the Czech development aid and established that cost variance is affected by the type of implementing agencies, whereas time variance depends on the developing countries. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this article is to further analyse ID projects by the Czech Development Agency and evaluate the influence of sector topics, budget size and type of financing on the time and budget management of Czech ID projects to determine what parameters could improve the efficiency of Czech ID projects. Methods: Information on all official projects conducted from 2016 to 2019 used in this article are non-public and have been received directly from the Czech Development Agency. They are first summarised in a descriptive statistics part and then analysed by non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. Findings & Value added: The results show that budget size, financing type and sector topics influence the cost variance, with smaller projects financed as public procurement achieving bigger savings. For time variance, there are significant differences only between different categories of the sector topics with projects focused on the environment leading to the biggest delays.

2008 Sonrası Dönemde BM ve AB’nin Çok Taraflı Kalkınma İşbirliğindeki Rolünün Karşılaştırmalı Analizi

There has been tremendous evolution in terms of both the institutionalization as well as the
 quantitative increase in multilateral development efforts since the end of the Second World War. Yet,
 the real qualitative progress of multilateral aid channeled through international organizations (IOs)
 has always been contested throughout history. Especially after 2008 financial crisis, neoliberal norms
 of development have been challenged by decreasing fate on democracy, multilateralism as well as
 competitive alternative models of development cooperation among developing countries of the Global
 South. In this context, this paper attempts to comparatively examine the policies of two main constitutive
 IOs, the UN and the EU in multilateral development efforts in the post-2008 era. To this aim, the paper
 will scrutinize official development aid statistics data from OECD between 2011-2017 in order to assess
 whether there has been a significant change in their aid efforts. The paper concludes that UN system
 has continued to be the main actor in the development cooperation funding in 2000s. While the EU
 still maintains the status of biggest core (direct/non-restricted) donor, the UN increasingly becomes a
 non-core (sector, program and region-driven) donor of the multilateral development system. Yet, crises
 of neoliberalism in the changing world order have an impact on the role of these IOs in terms of the
 implementation of a “rule-based” development cooperation system as well the sustainability of their
 “normative” actorness.

From Monterrey to Addis Ababa and beyond

How did the global framework for financing sustainable development evolve in the past ten years? We argue that its evolution is deeply connected to multilateral initiatives such as the Monterrey consensus,the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Therefore, the year 2015 may be considered as a landmark. In this vein, we identified five keychanges that affect the global framework for financing development worldwide, showing how traditional international cooperation mechanisms coexist with new ones. They are discussed in the followingorder: the evolution of global development agendas; systemic power relations and financial flows; the institutional entrepreneurship of emerging powers; the increased role of development banks; and from official development aid (ODA) to international public finance. Under the United Nations auspices or not, middle-income countries started to play a bigger role in financing mechanisms. Likewise, some national development banks became more important and started to act more closely under the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) auspices. Brazil, Colombia and South Africa are mentioned as cases for future research.

Carving Out an Empire? How China Strategically Uses Aid to Facilitate Chinese Business Expansion in Africa **

Abstract:China’s rising investment and aid flows into Africa have raised concerns over its increasing influence, triggering worries about a new scramble for Africa. This paper sorts out the motivations behind the various forms of Chinese aid, arguing that China uses different types of aid strategically to divert the recipient countries’ economic and institutional orientation towards its own interests. Exploiting the AidData set, we show that China’s official development aid (ODA) is positively related to an export bias in favour of China, suggesting that it serves to secure privileged access for Chinese firms to African resources. ODA tends to flow to less democratic regimes, because less accountable governments have more power to offer long-run privileges to their financial supporters. In contrast, we show that other official flows (OOF) are used to increase China’s import share and is positively related to institutional quality, since this has a positive influence on market growth. This suggests that OOF is mainly used to facilitate Chinese access to promising African consumer markets. We conclude that while China employs different aid flows for different economic purposes, it uses all aid flows strategically to advance its interests and create an economic sphere of influence in Africa.

Why fungibility of development aid can be good news: Pakistan case study

This study investigates the link between fungibility and international aid effectiveness by combining quantitative and qualitative methods; using state-of-the-art statistical analysis with in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, it provides deeper insights into fungibility and its drivers. It uses a different starting point than most studies on fungibility, namely that fungibility might actually be quite positive to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It contributes empirically to the debate on aid effectiveness and fungibility with respect to Pakistan, one of the largest recipients of Official Development Aid (ODA) over the past decades. Findings suggest that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between aid inflows and government development expenditures. While development expenditures of the government rise initially with aid inflows, expenditures actually decline with higher aid levels. Looking at the interviews for the case of Pakistan, we can conclude that this higher level of fungibility with higher aid inflows might actually be good news for recipient countries, as valid reasons to reallocate the original allocations also emerged. Our main policy implication is that donors and recipient governments should collaborate more on the allocation and redistribution of funds to ensure successful progress towards the SDGs with minimal loss of scarce resources.

Do diplomatic visits promote official development aid? Evidence from Japan

Do diplomatic visits by political leaders of recipient countries to donors influence the amount of bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) granted by donors? Some might argue that as aid al...

Official Development Assistance in Japan's Strategy in Central Asia

The article analyzes the official development aid (ODA) as a tool for ensuring Japan’s interests in Central Asia. The author puts forward an idea that ODA reflects the complex nature of Japan’s foreign policy which is a combination of a strategies based on national interests, efforts at implementation of liberal values and seeking common Asian identity. The research starts from the brief overview of history of the ODA and then proceeds to the coverage of Japan’s ODA towards Central Asia to demonstrate how the evolution of Japan’s political priorities manifested itself in the country’s assistance policy. The author uses quantitative and qualitative analysis of ODA to Central Asia as well as content analysis of the key documents on diplomacy and ODA. The research then focuses on the main directions of assistance and studies how they relate to Japan’s foreign policy goals. Further attention is given to the role Japan plays in the region, by assessing her position among the main donors of Central Asia as well as the significance of its aid from the point of view of economic development of the region, ODA’s security role and Japan’s efforts at preserving the cultural heritage of the region. The author comes to the conclusion that realism-based objectives such as getting access to the natural resources of the region, securing its geopolitical stance in the heart of Eurasia and ensuring the support for Japan’s bid to the UN Security Council seat by five Central Asian states dominate Japan’s ODA policy. It is also influenced by external factors, such as US-Japan military alliance and Japan’s geopolitical rivalry with China. At the same time, much of Japan’s efforts are directed at liberal goals such as promoting democracy in the region with Japan being a role model for democratization, supporting modernization and market economy. Assisting economic development and helping settle security issues with an emphasis on human security projects demonstrate not only Japan’s desire to boost its positive image in the region but also enhance its international reputation and its vision of Central Asia as a ground for cooperation with other countries. The author comes to the conclusion that cultural ODA is directed at objects related to shared history, mainly at preservation of the Buddhist heritage which Japan sees as a foundation for common identity and which underlies its connections to the Silk Road.

Postgraduate migration behaviour of international university students supported from the Czech Development Cooperation scholarships

AbstractThe development impacts of international scholarships for students from the Global South are most commonly understood through the expansion of human capital in the students' home countries for which the scholars' return analysed in this paper represents a key prerequisite. Utilising the theory of planned behaviour, this paper examines factors influencing the plans to return and actual postgraduation migration behaviour of 430 grantees of the Czech scholarship programme financed from the official development aid. One half of the current grantees reported plan to return, and only the 31% of alumni respondents actually returned suggesting a risk of brain drain. We found that economic integration rather than perceived sociocultural integration influences migration decision making of international students. We show how the propensity to return to scholars' home countries can be estimated from cross‐sectional data. A graphical path model was developed, which helps to understand drivers of postgraduate migration behaviour of international students.