US Economic Aid Research Articles

Особливості Плану Маршалла в контексті його економічного аспекту і переваг та недоліків реалізації

Introduction. The Marshall Plan, or the European Recovery Program after World War II, was a successful U.S. project with far-reaching positive consequences. Problem Statement. Considering that the Plan fostered the quick European recovery after the war, restoration of manufacturing, and increase in industrial capacity, it is worth addressing its peculiarities in more detail. Purpose. The article aims to analyze the peculiarities of the Marshall Plan in the context of its economic aspect and implementation of its pros and cons. Methods. The theoretical and methodological foundation of the research comprises the studies of leading foreign and Ukrainian researchers. Scientific problems related to the features of foreign assistance provision in the post-war period were examined with the help of the methods of critical and scientific analysis, scientific generalization, systematization, induction, and deduction. Results. The article provides an analysis of the pros and cons of the Marshall Plan. It addresses innovative tools applied in the course of its implementation, in particular, general agreements or a “letter of commitment”, purchase permits, auxiliary partnership funds, conditional aid, drawing rights, European Payments Union, and technical assistance. An analysis of the distribution of US economic aid to Europe within the framework of the Plan was carried out across loans, aid across articles and income per capita in the participating countries. A range of recommendations for the Ukrainian “Marshall Plan” is offered. Conclusions. The Marshall Plan was among the key events of the 1914-1990 period, which formed an unprecedented international cooperation scheme. The Plan implementation resulted in a substantial contribution of the U.S. to the recovery of World war II-torn Europe and the restoration of its industrial capacity, laying a strong foundation for European cooperation and an increase in the Europeans’ standards of living. The features of the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which most contributed to its success, were the organization of the provision of economic assistance, the encouragement of the recipient countries to their duties of active participation in reconstruction and cooperation, as well as the absence of bureaucracy and the high qualification of the team that implemented the Plan.

The Impact of US Aid on the Attitudes of Educated Youth of Pakistan

Pakistan is one of the countries which have been economically well aided by the US for a long time. A survey conducted in 2012 by Pew Research Center’s on the Pakistani people’s attitude towards the US, reveals that majority of the Pakistanis have antipathies against US. This research aimed to explore the opinions of Pakistani educated youth about the significance of US economic aid for Pakistan and the extent of their likeness for the residents of US and its policies towards region, specifically towards Pakistan especially after the incidence of 9/11. The data was collected with the help of a structured questionnaire by interviewing 300 university students over 18 years of age from various public and private sector universities in Karachi. This research shows that most of the respondents of the survey answered the US economic aid to their country is significant and helpful, differently from the result of the above Pew Research Center’s 2012 survey. Furthermore, half of them showed their likeness towards people of US and their policies to support Pakistan in alleviating poverty and for the economic development of their country. This situation shows that the young and well educated generation has more positive attitudes towards the US than the general population in Pakistan. Nonetheless, more than half of the respondents considered the reason the US has increased its economic aid to their country since 9/11 is not for Pakistan but for its engagement in ‘counter-terrorism in Afghanistan’. The study concludes the signs of correlation between the US aid to Pakistan and likeness of Pakistani youth towards the people of US. This result has the important implication on the future relationship between US and Pakistan. DOI : 10.7176/DCS/9-4-11 Publication date : April 30 th 2019

Exceptional or Expendable? How Economic and Strategic Interests Undermine Democracy, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights in US Economic Aid Allocation

Advancing democracy and respect for human rights is central to our foreign policy. It is what our history and our values demand.1 —National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice We partner to end extreme ...

Competing Concerns: Balancing Human Rights and National Security in US Economic Aid Allocation

This paper theorizes that the effect of human rights violations on US economic aid is conditioned by the salience of US national security concerns. National security concerns will be more salient in situations where recipients contribute to maintaining US security and in temporal eras when the USA is perceived as being under increased external threat. As the relational and temporal salience of national security increases, any negative effect of human rights violations on US economic aid should decrease. I test this hypothesis by examining US economic aid allocations to states from 1977 to 2005. The results show that the salience of national security concerns present in the US-recipient relationship does condition the relationship between human rights violations and US economic aid. There are also significant differences between different temporal eras of US foreign aid allocation. Future work should address how conflicts between interests and values in US foreign policy are negotiated.

The Effect of Bargaining on US Economic Aid

ABSTRACTThis article is designed to explore the effect of bargaining power on the distribution of US economic aid. Conceptualizing US foreign assistance as the outcome of aid-for-policy transactions between the donor and its recipients, it shows why the bargaining issue is an integral part of US economic aid. A two-tiered stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) is then developed to integrate the bargaining effect into our empirical analysis. Applying the model to US economic aid for the period of 1976–2011, I show empirical results that strongly support the bargaining approach. The results show that the bargaining effect explains a fundamental part of the cross-recipient difference in the level of US economic aid. On average, the donor US enjoys more bargaining power. However, a huge variation in bargaining capability on the recipient side is equally noteworthy. As for the contributors to the difference, the statistical results reveal that bargaining efficiency increases with higher per capita income, ongoing civil war, violations of personal integrity rights, and a more democratic regime, on the one hand. Importing heavily from and having an active defense pact with the US, on the other hand, affect bargaining efficiency negatively.

An Issue of National Security: The Roles of United States Economic and Military Aid in Promoting Human Development and Political Stability in Developing Countries

This thesis examines the effects of United States economic and United States military aid on the factors of human development, political stability, and rule of law on three regions of the world, the Middle East, South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, through a series of ordinary least squares regressions utilizing lagged independent variables in order to indicate causality, and views the issue through the lens of US national security. The results are compared and contrasted with previous studies, which came to varying conclusions regarding the effectiveness of aid. This thesis finds that US economic aid has both positive and negative, both significant and insignificant, effects upon human development and political stability, and these effects vary dynamically between the three regions, while not having any significant effects upon the rule of law.Of notable importance, this thesis finds that economic aid to developing countries generally has significant beneficial effects on HDI. Past theoretical research has indicated that increases in HDI should result in less political instability and less extremism. Furthermore, this paper finds that U.S. economic aid to developing countries generally has significantly more beneficial effects on the HDI and/or political stability of those recipient countries than does U.S. military aid. The paper also finds that U.S. and non-US economic in military aid has positive HDI and/or poltical stability effects in some geopolitical regions and negative effects in others, which indicates that it could be beneficial for a future study to conduct economic and military aid case studies for these regions, exploring and comparing potential reasons behind the differing outcomes. The thesis concludes by acknowledging both the positive and negative effects of US economic and military aid, and recommends a reevaluation of current US aid policy to right certain inefficiencies and ineffectiveness.

Donor–recipient ideological differences and economic aid

We explore the impact of donor–recipient ideological differences on US economic aid decisions. We find that the odds and the amount of aid to left-wing recipients are higher under left-wing US administrations. The opposite result is found for center-right recipients.

US Military Aid in the 1980s: A Global Analysis

Although researchers have recently made some progress in explaining the outputs of the US economic aid decision-making process, their efforts to explain the allocation of US military aid have been rather disappointing. In this article, we follow previous studies that have assumed a two-stage process leading up to the allocation of military aid, while making three significant improvements over those efforts. First we employ a better model, including a variety of political, strategic, economic, and humanitarian variables we hypothesize to be related to the allocation of military aid. Second, we solve the `low n' difficulty that plagued previous research, by employing an extensive dataset that covers a global sample of countries covering the 1983-8 period. And third, unlike previous research where a two-stage process has been assumed, we employ a methodology that solves the difficulties associated with selection bias, which arises when two interrelated decisions are modeled separately. As a result of these improvements our results are much stronger than those of previous studies. We find that strategic, political, and economic interests, as well as human rights concerns and economic development, have been considered in the US military aid decision-making process.

An Australian perspective on the “New international economic order”

The underpinnings o f the strategy were hundreds o f US military bases, massive US economic aid to Europe, Taiwan and South Korea and a series o f international agreements regulating the international flow of trade and payments. Foremost among these were the Bretton Woods Agreement, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the establishment o f the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (1)

Foundations of Federal Fertility Policy

For years open discussion of fertility issues in governmental circles was taboo. Recognition of the effect of population growth in countries receiving US economic aid and political maturation of the environmental movement gave added impetus to consideration of fertility issues. Increasing visibility however was accompanied by confusion. Some sought governmental initiatives aimed at reducing or stabilizing aggregate population size; others supported family planning programs for the poor as a component of the Great Society with emphasis on atomistic goals such as maternal and child health and parental choice in determining family size. Not only do goals and orientation differ but also there is disagreement about the demographic evidence. Some argue that programs aimed at promoting choice and focused on the poor will achieve population stability while others believe such a limited target will not achieve populationist goals and indeed will run the risk of criticism as race or class legislation. So far domestic legislation has conformed to atomistic family goals focusing on the poor but the current administration seems to be backing away from its commitment in line with a general de-emphasis of categorical programs. It may be that only by joining forces can family planners and population controllers resist erosion of previous political gains. (authors)