A call to rethink the aid effectiveness debate
A call to rethink the aid effectiveness debate By Anna Patricia Valerio 29 August 2014 Food aid distribution in Pakistan, where 12.5 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance following heavy floods in August 2010. Does aid work? A new working paper suggests that the aid effectiveness debate could benefit from asking slightly different questions. Photo by: Rob Holden / Department for International Development / CC BY-NC-ND The debate surrounding foreign aid effectiveness is often framed around whether or not aid works, but that, according to a new working paper on the issue released this week, may just be the tip of the iceberg. Nancy Qian, associate professor of economics at Yale University and author of the paper, which will be published in the Annual Review of Economics next year, suggests that the often polarizing discussion on aid effectiveness could very well benefit from asking slightly different questions. Qian starts out by laying out some figu