Is Corporate Aid Targeted to Poor and Deserving Countries? A Case Study of Nestlé’s Aid Allocation

SummaryEmpirical evidence on the targeting of private aid is largely lacking, even though corporate donors are an increasingly important source of aid. We contribute to closing this gap by performing a case study of Nestlé. The allocation of Nestlé’s aid is compared to that of Swiss ODA and NGO aid, testing for both altruistic and selfish aid motivations. We conclude that Nestlé’s aid clearly lacks focus in terms of targeting poor countries, which appears to be the downside of the strong link between commercial presence and aid. Moreover, according to our Tobit estimations, Nestlé grants more aid to recipient countries with stronger democratic but also more corrupt institutions.