My dissertation is an advocacy of the idea that if aid proved to be ineffective, it is partly because of the donor and not only the recipient as it is usually argued. The thesis contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on aid effectiveness and explores the ability of aid to achieve its goals in the presence of both incentives and informational problems. <p>The thesis consists of three essays dealing with a particular aspect of donor policies that may impact the effectiveness of aid: i) the drivers of aid allocation among recipient countries, ii) ex-post conditionality and the role of reputation in inducing compliance with aid contracts; iii) and finally, the optimal choice of aid modalities.<p>The first chapter investigates the drivers of U.S. aid policy. <p><p>I find considerable evidence that the pattern of aid is dictated as much by political and strategic considerations, as by the economic needs and merit of the recipients. Most importantly, inertia seems to impact heavily the aid allocation process. Any of these motivations, when excessive, would lead to a time inconsistency situation where the donor is not credible in his conditionality. With such an impact on aid allocation, the question arises on the effectiveness of conditioning aid provision on political, social, or economic reforms. This is precisely the scope of chapter 2.<p><p>The second chapter investigates the conditions under which reputation can serve as commitment device in order to induce donors of development aid to enforce aid contracts and recipients to comply with such contracts. The idea is that the success of conditionality rests solely on the availability of a commitment technology that ties the hands of the donor. Reputation concerns could create the required incentives and overcome the altruism effect on the donor side.<p><p>Notwithstanding that incentive creation must not be driven by the volume of aid only, but also by the way it is channelled, i.e. aid modality. This is particularly relevant for recipients with certain characteristics. Depending on the preference alignment of the donor and the recipient, the information structure in place, the optimal aid modality can change. The characteristics of the optimal aid package are investigated in chapter 3. Optimality imposes a mix of fixed project and financial transfer to recipient countries. The transfer can be negative for countries exhibiting a high willingness or ability to redistribute to the poor. This is interpreted as a contribution to the financing of the infrastructure project. The extent of the project (large or small size) is determined by the interest of government for the poor in the recipient country.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 16 octobre 2023) / Ce mémoire cherche à définir l'action environnementale de trois fondations philanthropiques états-uniennes -- le Rockefeller Brothers Fund, le German Marshall Fund et la Charles Stewart Mott Foundation -- en Europe centrale entre 1989 et 2003. Il met en évidence leur discours, leurs choix et leurs processus et montre comment leur aide à des donataires du milieu environnemental s'insère dans une démarche plus large de démocratisation de la région. Il postule en effet que l'action des fondations est indissociable de leur volonté de contribuer au développement et plus tard au maintien de la société civile en Pologne, en Hongrie, en République tchèque et en Slovaquie. Cette volonté repose elle-même sur la conception fondamentalement états-unienne qu'entretiennent les fondations sur le fonctionnement d'une démocratie, qui présuppose la nécessité de l'existence d'un secteur à but non lucratif professionnalisé. / This thesis seeks to define the environmental action of three American philanthropic foundations -- the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the German Marshall Fund and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation -- in Central Europe between 1989 and 2003. It highlights their discourse, their choices and their processes and shows how their assistance to donors from the environmental sector fits into a broader process of democratization of the region. It postulates that their action is inseparable from their desire to contribute to the development and later to the continuous support of civil society in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This desire is itself based on a fundamentally American conception of what is a democracy, which presupposes the need for a professionalized non-profit sector.

Le présent mémoire s'intéresse à la politique d'aide pratiquée par le gouvernement des États-Unis à l'égard de la Yougoslavie de Tito entre 1948 et 1951. Plus précisément, il cherche à déterminer les raisons qui ont amené l'administration démocrate d'Harry Truman à apporter un soutien économique et militaire de plusieurs dizaines de millions de dollars au régime yougoslave durant cette période. Cette étude s'est principalement basée sur des sources institutionnelles produites par les branches executive et législative du gouvernement américain. Les volumes de la série Foreign Relations of the United States, les rapports produits par les services de renseignement américains, de même que le Congressionnal Record, ont ainsi constitué la majeure partie du corpus. Leur analyse tend à démontrer que l'assistance économique et militaire fournie par les États-Unis à la Yougoslavie entre 1948 et 1951 visait d'abord à améliorer la défense de l'Europe occidentale et, dans une moindre mesure, à encourager les dissensions au sein de la sphère d'influence soviétique.