Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of Aid for Trade (AfT) inflows and recommend new areas of interest concerning the initiative other than its effect on trade performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviews a sample of 55 studies over the past 11 years. Besides, this paper categorised the reviewed empirical studies into three groups: the works concentrating on the trade performance effect; the works focusing on other economic factors effect; and the works concerning the allocation effect of these inflows. This paper also offers a detailed analysis of the multiple empirical methods, sources of data, coverage of the countries and forms of AfT inflows used in the reviewed literature.

Findings

Key findings indicated that AfT has overall produced a successful impact as reported by most studies. Moreover, it has been highlighted that the effectiveness of AfT may differ relying on multiple indicators: the category of AfT disbursements; income of the recipient country; the recipient country's geographical region; the amount of aggregate AfT as well as its main categories; the policy regulation and institutional quality of the recipient country; and the degree of liberalisation in the recipient country.

Originality/value

This paper is special in that it is the first to publish a comprehensive narrative analysis of 55 empirical pieces of evidence on the effectiveness of AfT over the past 11 years. It is also the first paper to review the previous literature regarding the effectiveness of AfT inflows on other non-trade outcomes, as well as trade outcomes in one single study. The outcome of the survey reveals new areas of interest in the effectiveness of AfT aside from trade performance.

中文翻译：

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贸易援助倡议 16 周年：从实证文献中吸取的经验教训和对未来方向的建议

目的

本文的目的是审查有关贸易援助 (AfT) 流入有效性的经验证据，并就该倡议提出新的感兴趣领域，而不是其对贸易绩效的影响。

设计/方法/方法

本文回顾了过去 11 年中 55 项研究的样本。此外，本文将回顾的实证研究分为三组：专注于贸易绩效影响的研究；关注其他经济因素影响的作品；以及有关这些流入分配效应的工作。本文还对审查文献中使用的多种实证方法、数据来源、国家覆盖范围和 AfT 流入形式进行了详细分析。

发现

主要研究结果表明，正如大多数研究报告的那样，AfT 总体上产生了成功的影响。此外，还强调了 AfT 的有效性可能因多个指标而异：AfT 支付的类别；受援国的收入；接受国的地理区域；总 AfT 的数量及其主要类别；受援国的政策监管和制度质量；以及接受国的自由化程度。

原创性/价值

这篇论文的特别之处在于，它是第一篇对过去 11 年中关于 AfT 有效性的 55 条实证证据进行全面的叙述性分析。这也是第一篇回顾以往文献的论文，这些文献涉及 AfT 流入对其他非贸易成果的有效性，以及一项研究中的贸易成果。调查结果揭示了除贸易业绩外，对 AfT 有效性的新关注领域。