ABSTRACT
This chapter builds an original dataset combining foreign aid data with information on donor’s intentions (from AidData) and the regime characteristics of aid recipients (from Polity IV) to test the implications of the theory. The dataset contains time series cross-sectional data from 1973 to 2006 with a total of 2091 observations with complete data. The level of analysis is the recipient-year. Although the data is monadic, dyadic information on donor-recipient relationships has been preserved. Donors can value recipients for their economic or strategic attributes. The economic value of recipients to donors includes its significance as a source of imports, as a destination for exports and its economic size. The strategic value of recipients to donors includes its geographic proximity, its population size and the affinity in UN General Assembly votes. To aggregate the overall salience of recipients, composite indices, with one each for economic salience and strategic salience, are used. The analysis controls for the Cold War, since it affects the ability of recipients to play one donor group against another. The analysis also accounts for reverse causality by focusing recipients that has not been reforming prior to the commitment of aid.
