A large literature has not reached consensus on foreign aid’s economic effects. Using geolocated aid data and daytime satellite images over nearly 10,000 African neighborhoods, I examine the economic growth impact of World Bank and Chinese aid to 36 Africa countries from 2002-2013, covering 88% of the continent’s population, by sector (e.g. Health, Education, Water Supply and Sanitation, etc.). I estimate each funder and aid sector’s average treatment effect with an inverse probability weighting approach and adjust for two types of confounders: those I provide in a tabular format and proxies based on satellite images of each neighborhood. The use of image-based confounders may reduce bias due to omitted variables and measurement errors when unobserved or mis-measured variables are visible remotely. To measure economic outcomes, I use a new wealth index generated by a machine learning algorithm trained to associate USAID-funded DHS survey wealth measures with daytime and nighttime satellite imagery from the same years and locations. The availability of the wealth estimate for 3-year periods over thirty years enabled the analysis to use panel data and fixed effects at the second administrative division (e.g. county, district, city) level. The results are heterogenous across sectors but generally show small positive effects of World Bank aid and larger positive effects of Chinese aid. Substantive results are generally robust to the choice of computer vision image model, except for three funder-sectors where wide confidence intervals make one model but not the other statistically insignificant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-205256 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Conlin, Cindy |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Institutet för analytisk sociologi, IAS |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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