Dissertation Defenses

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

---

Candidate: Aberra Senbeta

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Economics

Title: Three Essays on Foreign Aid, Poverty and Growth

Committee:
Dr. Eskander Alvi, Chair
Dr. Debasri Mukherjee
Dr. Ajay Gupta

Date: Monday, July 27, 2009 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
5302 Friedmann Hall

Abstract:
This dissertation studies how foreign aid impacts poverty and economic growth and addresses three interrelated issues: whether aid reduces poverty, how aid affects economic growth, and does the mitigating role of poverty aid vary at different levels.
The second chapter, “Does Foreign Aid Reduce Poverty?” examines the direct effects of foreign aid on poverty in developing countries using dynamic panel estimation techniques. The results suggest that aid has a significant poverty reducing effect even after controlling for average income. The findings are robust to model specification and estimation techniques. The policy implication is that poverty reduction can be enhanced by concentrating on the direct channels via which aid alleviates poverty. We also find that the composition of aid matters—multilateral aid reduces poverty whereas bilateral aid does not, and grants do better in reducing poverty compared to loans.
The third chapter, “Foreign Aid and the Sources of Growth,” evaluates the effects of aid on sources of growth—capital accumulation and total factor productivity (TFP). This approach is different in that it focuses on efficiency changes resulting after the disbursement of aid. Interestingly, we find contradictory effects of aid; while aid boosts investments, it adversely affects TFP. These findings suggest that, despite the strong positive association between aid and investment, the efficiency losses resulting from aid undermine the overall effects of aid on growth.
In the fourth chapter, “Foreign Aid, Growth and Poverty Relationship: Quantile Regression Approach,” we extend the analysis of the aid-growth-poverty relationship by using quantile regression, which enables us to estimate the impact of growth and growth enhancing policies at different points in the distribution of poverty. We find that the response of poverty reduction to growth in average income and other growth enhancing policies decreases at higher levels of poverty. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity of aid and use of alternative measures of poverty, poverty gap and squared poverty gap.