Is Respect for Human Rights Rewarded? An Analysis of Total Bilateral and Multilateral Aid Flows

Donors frequently claim that a country's record on human rights plays a role in the decision whether it receives aid and if so, how much. This study of total bilateral and multilateral aid flows finds that human rights play at best a rather limited role in the allocation of aid. Aspects of human rights are often statistically insignificant and even when they are significant, they are not very important as a determinant of aid allocation. Furthermore, the situation has not much improved after the end of the Cold War. Only for multilateral aid is there some indication that respect for human rights has played a greater role