世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Is the way that people make risky choices, or tradeoffs over time, related to cognitive ability? This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures. We conduct choice experiments measuring risk aversion, and impatience over an annual time horizon, for a randomly drawn sample of roughly 1,000 German adults. Subjects also take part in two different tests of cognitive ability, which correspond to sub-modules of one of the most widely used IQ tests. Interviews are conducted in subjects' own homes. We find that lower cognitive ability is associated with greater risk aversion, and more pronounced impatience. These relationships are significant, and robust to controlling for personal characteristics, educational attainment, income, and measures of credit constraints. We perform a series of additional robustness checks, which help rule out other possible confounds.

/pdf/are-risk-aversion-and-impatience-related-to-cognitive-3n71ze8tmw.pdf

Are risk aversion and impatience related to cognitive ability

http://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/mjtier/moredollarsthansense

More Dollars than Sense: Refining Our Knowledge of Development Finance Using AidData

Performance-based aid has been proposed as an alternative to the failed traditional approach whereby donors make aid conditional on the reform promises of recipient countries. However, hardly any empirical evidence exists on whether ex post rewards are effective in inducing reforms. We attempt to fill this gap by investigating whether the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was successful in promoting better control of corruption. We employ a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach, considering different ways of defining the treatment group as well as different time periods during which incentive effects could have materialized. We find evidence of strong anticipation effects immediately after the announcement of the MCC, while increasing uncertainty about the timing and amount of MCC aid appear to weaken the incentive to fight corruption over time.

/pdf/does-conditionality-work-a-test-for-an-innovative-us-aid-3h9u4xmnqw.pdf

Does Conditionality Work? A Test for an Innovative US Aid Scheme

https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/document/download/c67bea91e5037215461f9994b2c1cb1f.pdf/111_Oehler.pdf

Throwing foreign aid at HIV/AIDS in developing countries: Missing the target?

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/41572/1/623719320.pdf

Why it pays for aid recipients to take note of the Millennium Challenge Corporation: Other donors do!

NGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for Swiss NGOs. The analysis offers new insights in two major regards: First, we cover the allocation of both self-financed and officially co-financed aid for a large panel of NGOs and recipient countries. Second, by classifying each NGO according to its financing structure, we address the unresolved question of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of NGO aid. It turns out that NGOs mimic the state as well as NGO peers. Officially refinanced NGOs are more inclined to imitate the allocation of ODA. However, the degree of financial dependence does not affect the poverty orientation of NGO aid and the incentives of NGOs to engage in easier environments. The allocation of self-financed aid differs in several respects from the allocation of officially co-financed aid, including the role of financial dependence for imitating the state and herding among NGOs.

Financial dependence and aid allocation by Swiss NGOs

Development assistance has been criticised for a lack of coordination between aid donors. This paper argues that competition for export markets and political support prevents donor countries from coordinating their aid activities between one another. To test these hypotheses, we perform logit and fractional logit estimations for a large sample of recipient countries and aid activities since the early 1970s. Our empirical results reveal that export competition between donors is a major impediment to aid coordination. Although less conclusive, we also find some evidence that donors' competition over political support prevents them from coordinating aid activities more closely.

/pdf/why-donors-of-foreign-aid-do-not-coordinate-the-role-of-4ch82b5lpr.pdf

Hannes Öhler

Papers

Does Conditionality Work? A Test for an Innovative US Aid Scheme

Throwing foreign aid at HIV/AIDS in developing countries: Missing the target?

Why it pays for aid recipients to take note of the Millennium Challenge Corporation: Other donors do!

Financial dependence and aid allocation by Swiss NGOs

Why Donors of Foreign Aid Do Not Coordinate: The Role of Competition for Export Markets and Political Support