Date : Jeudi | 2026-11-05 à 12h30
Lieu : Salle des thèses

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Thais Nunez-Rocha (Université d'Orléans)

We investigate whether rich countries use development aid to secure access to natural resources. Our model shows that even an altruistic donor may allocate more infrastructure aid to recipients from whom it receives more resource exports. Using CRS project-level data over 2006-2021, with a 2001-2011 robustness sample, we estimate a fixed-effects ladder of increasing stringency. Resource trade is positively associated with the number of infrastructure projects: a one-unit increase in the resource-trade term is associated with an 8 to 14 percent increase in the expected number of projects across specifications. This association is statistically significant under donor-recipient pair clustering but not under two-way clustering by donor and recipient, nor under a wild cluster bootstrap over donors. A positive value effect appears only in our most demanding, fully saturated specification and is only marginally significant under the bootstrap. No single resource category robustly drives the result, road is the only transport mode with a significant effect, and, in the fully saturated specification, greater oil tanker fleet capacity is linked to a smaller aggregate effect. We interpret our findings as a systematic but fragile allocation pattern, not a causal effect.