《经济学专业英语教程（第三版下）》Unit12外国援助.ppt

Unit 12 Text: Foreign Aid （外国援助） 1. Key words 2. Definition of foreign aid 3. Why donors give aid 4. Why LDC recipients accept aid 5. The effects of aid 6. Conclusions: Toward a new view of foreign aid 7. Questions 1. Key words 2. Definition of foreign aid Economists have defined foreign aid as any flow of capital to the less-developed countries (LDCs) that meets two criteria: (1) its objective should be noncommercial from the point of view of the donor, and (2) it should be characterized by concessional terms; that is, the interest rate and repayment period for borrowed capital should be softer (less stringent) than commercial terms. Foreign aid encompasses all official grants and concessional loans, in currency or in kind, that are broadly aimed at transferring resources from developed to less developed nations on development or income distribution grounds. 3. Why donors give aid 3.1 Political motivations 3.2 Economic motivations: Two-gap models and other criteria 3.3 Economic motivations and self-interest 3.1 Political motivations The United States has viewed foreign aid from its beginnings in the late 1940s under the Marshall Plan, which aimed at reconstructing the war-torn economies of Western Europe, as a means of containing the international spread of communism. When the balance of cold-war interests shifted from Europe to the Third World in the mid-1950s, the policy of containment embodied in the U.S. aid program dictated a shift in emphasis toward political, economic, and military support for “friendly” less developed nations, especially those considered geographically strategic. The successive shifts in emphasis from South Asia to Southeast Asia to Latin America to the Middle East and back to Southeast Asia during the 1950s and 1960s and then toward Africa and the Persian Gulf in the late 1970s and the Caribbean and Central America in the 1980s reflect changes in U.S. Strategic and political interests more than changing evaluations of economic need. In