Food Aid Donor Cooperation and Responsiveness to Recipient Country Need

We employ censored least absolute deviations and multivariate Tobit estimators to investigate whether food aid flows from the main donor countries respond to recipient country needs as reflect-ed in low food availability, low income, or both. We also explore the hypothesis that donor coun-tries specifically coordinate their food aid shipments to recipient countries. Food aid in aggregate and from each donor is significantly targeted at poorer countries and is highly persistent over time. Food aid responses to food availability shortfalls, natural disasters and violent conflict are common but more modest and uneven across donors. Finally, we find strong evidence of donor coordination in food aid allocation