Conflict and aid dependency – an explorative study motivated by the case of Palestine

Department

School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development

Additional Department

Economics, Finance and Quantitative Analysis

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-29-2019

Embargo Period

12-3-2019

Abstract

How does conflict affect aid? We argue that aid flows do not provide an accurate picture of the aid community’s legacy in conflict countries because aid flows do not inform about aid dependency, which is an often used, but not clearly defined or quantifiable, term. In this paper, we propose a quantifiable concept of aid dependency that is similar to epidemiology’s distinction between incidence (aid flows) and prevalence (aid dependency) rates. We then calculate for a sample of 101 countries their aid dependency levels and show that conflict is a driver of aid dependency. Our aid dependency concept may be useful for estimating the aid community’s necessary commitment in post-conflict countries to prevent the economy from stalling.

Journal Title

Journal of Development Effectiveness

Journal ISSN

1943-9342

Volume

11

Issue

3

First Page

253

Last Page

272

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1080/19439342.2019.1666899

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