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Working Paper
Financing growth: foreign aid vs. foreign loans
Compared to foreign grants, do concessional loans from foreign governments and/or unsubsidized loans from foreign private banks lead to faster growth in developing nations? The answer has implications for aid agencies (i) in allocating a given amount of resources between grants and concessional loans; and (ii) in encouraging financial market reforms. We examine the effects of ODA grants, concessional ODA loans, and private offshore bank loans on growth rates of 131 developing nations over 1996-2010 in a unified way. We find evidence of non-linearities in all three relationships, suggesting ...
Working Paper
Should easier access to international credit replace foreign aid?
We examine the interaction between foreign aid and binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country. We also analyze how these two instruments affect economic growth via non-linear relationships. First of all, we develop a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model to develop testable hypotheses and then we use dynamic panel analysis to test those hypotheses empirically. Our main findings are that: (i) better access to international credit for a recipient country reduces the amount of foreign aid it receives, and (ii) there is a critical level of international financial transfer, and ...
Working Paper
Cross-border lobbying in preferential trading agreements: implications for external tariffs
This paper examines the effect of cross-border lobbying on domestic lobbying and on external tariffs in both Customs Union (CU) and Free Trade Area (FTA). We do so by developing a two-stage game which endogenizes the tariff formation function in a political economic model of the directly unproductive rent-seeking activities type. We find that cross-border lobbying unambiguously increases both domestic lobbying and the equilibrium common external tariffs in a CU. The same result also holds for FTA provided tariffs for the member governments are strategic complements. We also develop a specific ...
Working Paper
On the substitutability between foreign aid and international credit
We examine the effect of relaxing a binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country on theamount of foreign aid it receives. We do so by developing a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model. The relaxation of the borrowing constraint reduces the flow of foreign aid, suggesting that the donor views developing nations' access to international credit markets as a substitute for foreign aid.
Working Paper
Possible Unintended Effects of Restrictions on Foreign Lobbying in a Customs Union
We consider the interactions between domestic lobbying and cross-border lobbying in a Customs Union (CU) in determining the Common External Tariff (CET). There are two types of cross-border lobbying: (i) lobbying from member-nation firms to the governments of other CU countries, and (ii) lobbying by firms from outside to the CU nation governments. Within this context, we analyze the effect of regulations on foreign lobbying on the equilibrium lobbying levels, and on the CET. If lobbying levels are strategic complements, tightening of restrictions on lobbying from outside the CU unambiguously ...
Journal Article
Do countries with greater credit constraints receive more foreign aid?
Donor nations may recognize that some developing nations face credit constraints in the world capital market. This knowledge may prompt donors to increase aid flows to alleviate the constraint. In such a situation, flows of foreign aid and foreign loans to developing nations may be substitutes for each other. The authors use data from 114 aid-recipient countries over the 1997-2008 period to investigate the relationship between foreign aid and foreign loans. The central finding is that this relationship is negative, lending support to the substitution hypothesis.
Working Paper
Political asymmetry and common external tariff in a customs union
We present a three-nation model, where two of the nations are members of a Customs Union (CU) and maintain a common external tariff (CET) on the third (non-member) nation. The producing lobby is assumed to be union-wide and lobbies both governments to influence the CET. The CET is determined jointly by the CU. We follow the political support function approach, where the CU seeks to maximize a weighted sum of the constituents? payoff functions, the weights reflecting the influence of the respective governments in the CU. A central finding of this paper is that the CET rises monotonically with ...
Working Paper
Enlargement and common external tariff in a political-economic model of customs union
We present a model with three blocks of nations: two of the blocks are members of a Customs Union (CU) and maintain a common external tariff (CET) on the third (non member). One of the member blocks is a block of new entrants. The producing lobby is assumed to be union-wide and lobbies governments of both blocks to influence the CET. The CET is determined jointly by the CU. We follow the political support function approach, where the CU seeks to maximize a weighted sum of the constituents? payoff functions. In this framework, we find the relationship between the CET and the average level of ...