A meta-analysis of aid effectiveness: revisiting the evidence

Abstract

As research on the empirical link between aid and growth continues to grow, it is time to revisit the accumulated evidence on aid effectiveness. This study extends previous meta-analyses, noting that the increased availability of data enables us to conduct a sub-group analysis by disaggregating the sample into different time horizons to assess whether there are temporal shifts in aid effectiveness. The new and updated results show that the previously reported positive evidence of aid’s impact is robust to the inclusion of more recent studies and this holds for different time horizons as well. The authenticity of the observed effect is further confirmed by results from funnel plots, regression-based tests, and a cumulative meta-analysis for publication bias.