How Foreign Aid Crowds Out Public Spending: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Malawi

• In Event: CwC Experiments and Political Elites: Experiments on Representation and Partisanship

Brief Overview

How does foreign aid affect public spending? In an RCT with elected MPs and councillors in Malawi, we find that foreign aid decreases education spending by 22-29%. We find little evidence that these effects increase political or economic inequality.

Authors

• Ryan Jablonski, University of California-San Diego

• Brigitte Seim, UNC Chapel Hill

• Johan Ahlback, London School of Economics