Temporal Dynamics of Development Aid in Africa: Evidence from a Staggered Difference-in-Differences Study of China and World Bank Projects in Africa (opens in new tab)

Subnational studies of aid effectiveness often rely on repeated cross-sections or nighttime lights, making it difficult to separate local treatment effects from baseline differences and potentially favoring infrastructure-heavy projects. We address these limitations by studying World Bank and Chinese development projects in Africa with a balanced panel of 2,166 DHS clusters across 35 countries from 2002 to 2013. Geocoded AidData projects are lin...