Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effectiveness of Offcial Development Assistance (ODA) in recipient countries' economy. ODA is designed to mitigate poverty and stimulate economic growth in the developing countries. We classify total ODA into bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA depending on the number of donor countries. If the ODA flows from one donor country to one recipient country, it is classified as bilateral ODA. If the multiple countries simultaneously become donor countries through the international organizations such as United Nations and World Bank, it is classified as multilateral ODA. This paper compares the effect of bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA in determining recipient countries' economic development, and tries to provide policy implications to Korean ODA. Research design, data, and methodology - Our primary explanatory variables are bilateral and multilateral ODA. Private credit in recipient countries is adopted as additional explanatory variables to capture the level of financial development in recipient countries. We measure the ODA effectiveness using economic growth and quality of life of the recipient countries as the dependent variable. We collect 142 recipient countries' data from OECD statistics, during the period from 1970-2014. Panel least squares estimation with country fixed effect is employed as the empirical model. Results - Our results support that ODA variable has a negatively significant impact on recipient countries' economic growth, while it is positively correlated with human development index. Recipient countries' private credit is positively correlated with economic growth and human development index. The interaction variable of ODA and financial development turns out to be significant in general. We find that the positive effect of ODA depends on recipient countries' financial market development and this effect is stronger in multilateral aid than bilateral one. Conclusions - From the analysis, we have confirmed that the recipient countries financial development is the necessity condition to achieve positive effect of ODA. Based on these results, we suggest that Korean government should increase the share of multilateral funding and pay attention to recipient countries' financial market development to maximize the effectiveness of ODA.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of donor’s fiscal status on aid decisions before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. The effects on aid can change depending on the donor country’s fiscal status and the period of financial crisis. Research design, data, and methodology – A fixed effect regression and dynamic panel GMM is conducted using a comprehensive dataset combining 31 donor and 167 recipient countries during 1996-2015. The key explanatory variable is central government debt-to-GDP ratio of donor country. Recipient countries' GNI per capita, population, governance indicators, and bilateral trade-to-GDP ratio between donor and recipient countries are included as control variables. Results – We can confirm the relationship between donor country’s fiscal status and aid flow. The cyclical component of government debt is found to have a negative impact on grant decisions particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis. This effect becomes larger in the countries with high government debt-to-GDP ratio. ODA decisions from the countries with low financial constraint do not significantly affected by the recipient countries’ factors such as GNI, population, and governance indicator. Conclusions – Based on the empirical results of this study, the source of aid should be diversified by incorporating private sector and innovative financing sources