The Institutional Economics of Foreign Aid - Softcover

Martens, Bertin; Mummert, Uwe; Murrell, Peter; Seabright, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521055393 ISBN 13: 9780521055390

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

This book analyzes the institutions--incentives and constraints--that guide the behavior of persons involved in the implementation of aid programs. While traditional performance studies tend to focus almost exclusively on policies and institutions in recipient countries, the authors look at incentives in the entire chain of organizations involved in the delivery of foreign aid, from donor governments and agencies to consultants, experts and other intermediaries. They examine incentives inside donor agencies, the interaction of subcontractors with recipient organizations, incentives inside recipient country institutions, and biases in aid performance monitoring systems.

About this title

About the Author:

Bertin Martens is an economist at the European Commission in Brussels. He has worked for various foreign aid organizations, including United Nations agencies and the European Commission, and he is a member of the International Society for New Institutional Economics.

Professor Uwe Mummert is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems in Jena, Germany.

Peter Murrell is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and currently holds a Chair on the Academic Council of the IRIS Center. He is the author of The Nature of Socialist Economies and Assessing the Value of Law in the Transition to Socialism, and is a contributor to various journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Comparative Economics.

Paul Seabright is Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse. His many publications have focused on theoretical and applied microeconomics, and he is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Review:

"The mjor merit of Martens' argument lies in his explicit plea in favor of the role evaluation pays in the information feedback loop by enlightening taxpayers about the `true` benefits of aid programs." Review of Political Economy, Mita Marra, Italian National Research Council

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0521055393
• ISBN 13: 9780521055390
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212