Elite capture of foreign aid

The evidence is taken from overseas bank accounts, and here is the abstract:

Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5 percent at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.

Here is the full piece, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.  That is by Jørgen Juel Andersen, Niels Johannesen, and Bob Rijkers , and here is a less gated link.

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