The Effects of Foreign Aid on the Creation and Distribution of
Wealth

Wenli Cheng

Dingsheng Zhang

and

Heng-fu Zou

This paper develops a model to study the effects of foreign aid on the creation and distribution of wealth in the recipient country. It considers three types of foreign aid: permanent grants to all individuals, temporary grants to uneducated workers, and foreign aid in the form of low interest rate loans to individuals who invest in education. The model shows that the economy may have two long-run equilibria, a rich equilibrium and a poor one. All types of foreign aid can increase the proportion of individuals investing in education, which means more people converging to the rich equilibrium and higher average wealth in the economy. In addition, if permanent or temporary grants are sufficient large, it is possible that the whole economy may converge to the rich equilibrium.