Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are widely expected to provide better targeted aid than state agencies with a hidden agenda of commercial and political self-interest. However, principal-agent models question that NGOs decide autonomously on aid allocation. Indeed, we show empirically that...

NGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for...

Previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country. We estimate Tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need, recipient merit and self-interest of donors for various channels of official and private German aid across a...

This paper analyzes whether and to what extent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) outperform official donors by allocating aid in a way that renders effective poverty alleviation more likely. We employ Probit and Tobit models and make use of an exceptionally detailed database that allows an...

Having passed the "market test", private aid is claimed by its proponents to be better-targeted than official development assistance (ODA). But empirical evidence is largely lacking. We contribute to closing this gap by performing a case study of Nestlé, one of the frontrunners among...

Being closer to the poor, NGOs are widely believed to provide better targeted aid than state agencies. But empirical evidence is largely lacking. We contribute to closing this gap by drawing on an exceptionally detailed Swiss database that covers different forms of NGO aid and several official...