Micro Responses to Disaster Relief Aid: Design Problems for Aid Efficacy

摘要

This article offers two empirical findings on aid targeting and design problems. First, aid beneficiaries following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami were determined not only by a supply-side targeting process but more critically by households' self-selection behavior prior to the delivery of aid. Second, the one-size-fits-all type fishing boats delivered by aid agencies, which often were poorly constructed, created a matching problem against recipients' heterogeneous skill distribution, which in turn resulted in below potential fishing revenue of aid beneficiaries.