SKKU research team led by Professor Travers B. Child of the SKK Graduate School of Business (SKK GSB) has become the first in the world to use micro-level data to demonstrate that "Aid Fragmentation"—the phenomenon in which numerous international aid agencies operate simultaneously in a single region—can deepen administrative corruption in developing countries. The study was conducted jointly with Professor Austin L. Wright of the University of Chicago and Professor Yun Xiao of the University of Gothenburg.
Aid fragmentation refers to a situation in which numerous aid agencies and organizations enter a single developing-country region at the same time, each carrying out its own projects. While there has long been concern in the international community that such overlap would undermine the effectiveness of aid, no study had previously provided concrete statistical evidence of how this phenomenon is actually linked to corruption at the local level.
Professor Child's research team conducted a rigorous analysis by combining data on more than 30,000 aid projects carried out across 330 districts in Afghanistan with large-scale household survey data collected by NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The analysis found that when a single aid agency provided concentrated support, local corruption decreased significantly—a clearly positive effect. However, when too many aid agencies became entangled in the same region, the resulting lapses in mutual oversight and diffusion of accountability allowed aid to become a channel for corruption instead.
Notably, the research team found that the effect of aid varies entirely depending on the "volume of aid" and the "type of project." When the scale of aid provided was moderate, multiple agencies operating together tended to play a positive role, sharing innovative ideas with one another. By contrast, when aid funding poured in at overwhelming levels, the negative effects of fragmentation were magnified, driving a sharp rise in corruption. The team also demonstrated that this corruption occurs overwhelmingly more often in visible "physical infrastructure projects"—such as road and bridge construction and supply delivery—than in non-physical services such as education or welfare.
The findings were formally published in the May 2026 issue of The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat), a globally prestigious journal in the field of economics.
