We develop a political-economic model of foreign aid allocation. Each ethnic group in the donor country lobbies the government for allocating more aid to its country of origin, and the government accepts contributions from lobby groups. Initial per-capita income of the recipients and those of...

Why do donor countries give foreign aid? The answers found in the literature are: (i) because donor countries care for recipient countries (e.g. altruism), and/or (ii) because there exist distortions that make the indirect gains from foreign aid (e.g. terms of trade effects) to be larger than...

Focusing on seven bilateral donors over a 25 year period, the paper answers 4 questions related to aid allocation practice. Questions one and two examine allocation differences between donors and time periods. Questions three and four relate to changes in poverty and policy selectivity. To...