Does Foreign Aid Displace Domestic Taxation?

The existence of a negative relationship between aid and taxation would have far-reaching implications for international development agencies. This paper applies some recent methodological advances to the question and also discusses a range of problems with existing research. Previous results, which tend to show a negative relationship, are often based on econometric methods that rest on potentially restrictive assumptions. When more general methods, Panel Time Series estimators and the Group Fixed Effects estimator, are applied, there is little evidence that aid displaces domestic taxation.