In the last 50 years aid has extrapolated its diplomatic objective. The total amount of aid flows disbursed by developed countries has summed lots of billion of dollars. The expectations, were, for a long period of time, not even measured or quantified. The buzz and the media circus created around aid have made African children a trademark used to gather millions. But in the middle of such buzz, the potential effectiveness of these large disbursements was not regarded. The tremendous flow of money has created regional elites, feeding their bank account from the total lack of responsibility that some aid agencies strongly practice. The track record for failed countries is, still today, incredible high, considered the amount of money and resources disbursed. How well is aid working in terms of economic growth and human development? What is the current development picture of the poorest of the poorest? The aim of this dissertation is clear: ascertain the impact of the world’s social investment, measured through its return in development and growth. How positive is world’s current ROSI (return on social investment)? We will therefore, review the main authors on effectiveness of aid and how do they engage with the current efforts in monitoring and control aid. We will give a special focus on human developing index, as a measure of both poverty and as the main guideline regarding development by crossing net official development assistance (1960--‐2010) with three different proxies (GDP per capita, Infant mortality rate and School enrolment), representative of each one of HDI’s levels (Income, Education and Health). We found no significant impact of the total flow of ODA given to a specific country, and its economic growth or human development. Subsequently we have disaggregated the aid flow, narrowing its purpose and increasing its explicative power by filtering ODA according to the sector where it was used (ODA used in Production, ODA used in Education and ODA used in Health), and then crossing it again with the three development proxies referred above. None significant correlation was found, although health sector stood out as the sector more susceptible to ODA inflows. The evidences collected over the resolution of this exercise led to the construction of an operational framework, prepared to analyse and structure aid disbursement based on its potential effectiveness. This framework will operate upon aid’s end--‐to--‐end flow by analysing all the resources and constrains experienced during the process. The guiding axes will the amount of aid, the context where aid is disbursed, , the conditions and resources behind its disbursement and finally the results achieved within this constrains. The extremely poor data availability has defined a constrained economic exercise; nonetheless we were able to find no significant relation between the inflow of a specific aid amount and the associated proxy capable of measuring that flow’s potential.
Date of Award | 2012 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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Supervisor | Susana Frazão Ferreira Fernandes Pinheiro (Supervisor) |
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Can we see the bottom? An impact measurement study on the ten least developed countries in the world (plus Haiti)
Martins, J. F. R. (Student). 2012
Student thesis: Master's Thesis