Impact of Bilateral and Multilateral Aid on Domestic Savings in Low and Middle-Income Sub Sahara African Countries: Mediating Role of Institutional Quality

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of bilateral and multilateral aid on domestic savings in SSA countries, and assess whether the impact depends on the quality of institutions. Using a panel data set of 28 selected SSA countries from 1996 – 2015, a model was specified and estimated using the techniques of random effects based on results of the Hausman test. The results show that only bilateral aid has a significant negative impact on domestic savings of SSA countries, implying a crowding-out effect. However, the impact of multilateral aid was found insignificant. After interacting bilateral and multilateral aid with institutional quality, it turns out that the negative impact of bilateral aid persists whereas multilateral aid shows a positive impact on domestic savings. It is interesting to note that aid regardless of the composition crowds out domestic savings in middle income SSA countries even after interacting with institutions, while for the case of low income countries, foreign aid particularly multilateral aid complements domestic saving if accompanied with improvement in the quality of institutions.