{"title":"Aid Volatility, Human Capital, and Growth","authors":"P. Agénor, Nihal Bayraktar","doi":"10.1086/710321","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We study the effect of aid volatility on education outcomes and economic growth, in a model that focuses on a low-income economy where acquiring skills benefits from public subsidies partly financed through foreign aid. By creating uncertainty about the net return to education, a high degree of aid volatility mitigates agents’ incentives to invest in skills. If savings and growth depend on the composition of the labor force, aid volatility may have an adverse effect on the mean growth rates of investment and output. Panel data regressions for a group of aid-dependent countries provide robust evidence of a negative relationship between the volatility of education aid and schooling outcomes.","PeriodicalId":46011,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Capital","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/710321","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Human Capital","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710321","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
We study the effect of aid volatility on education outcomes and economic growth, in a model that focuses on a low-income economy where acquiring skills benefits from public subsidies partly financed through foreign aid. By creating uncertainty about the net return to education, a high degree of aid volatility mitigates agents’ incentives to invest in skills. If savings and growth depend on the composition of the labor force, aid volatility may have an adverse effect on the mean growth rates of investment and output. Panel data regressions for a group of aid-dependent countries provide robust evidence of a negative relationship between the volatility of education aid and schooling outcomes.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Human Capital is dedicated to human capital and its expanding economic and social roles in the knowledge economy. Developed in response to the central role human capital plays in determining the production, allocation, and distribution of economic resources and in supporting long-term economic growth, JHC is a forum for theoretical and empirical work on human capital—broadly defined to include education, health, entrepreneurship, and intellectual and social capital—and related public policy analyses. JHC encompasses microeconomic, macroeconomic, and international economic perspectives on the theme of human capital. The journal offers a platform for discussion of topics ranging from education, labor, health, and family economics.