An Index of Donor Performance

The Commitment to Development Index of the Center for Global Development rates 21 rich countries on the “development-friendliness ” of their policies. It is revised and up-dated annually. In the 2005 edition, the component on foreign assistance combines quan-titative and qualitative measures of official aid, and of fiscal policies that support private charitable giving. The quantitative measure uses a net transfers concept, as distinct from the net flows concept in the net Official Development Assistance measure of the Devel-opment Assistance Committee. The qualitative factors are: a penalty for tying aid; a dis-counting system that favors aid to poorer, better-governed recipients; and a penalty for “project proliferation. ” The charitable giving measure is based on an estimate of the share of observed private giving to developing countries that is attributable to a) lower overall taxes or b) specific tax incentives for giving. Despite the adjustments, overall results are dominated by differences in quantity of official aid given. This is because while there is a seven-fold range in net concessional transfers/GDP among the scored countries, variation in overall aid quality across donors appears far lower, and private giving is generall