Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The rise and fall of the economy
- 2 U.S. aid to Vietnam: goals and programming
- 3 The growth of national income
- 4 Indicators of economic development
- 5 Land reform and income distribution in Vietnam economic development
- 6 Domestic saving, foreign aid, and economic development
- 7 Wartime inflation
- 8 Windfall gains from importing
- 9 The international value of the piaster
- 10 Vietnam foreign assistance
- 11 Financing public expenditures
- 12 The fiscal dilemma
- 13 Foreign aid and economic development in an environment of high military threat
- Notes
- References
- Index
10 - Vietnam foreign assistance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The rise and fall of the economy
- 2 U.S. aid to Vietnam: goals and programming
- 3 The growth of national income
- 4 Indicators of economic development
- 5 Land reform and income distribution in Vietnam economic development
- 6 Domestic saving, foreign aid, and economic development
- 7 Wartime inflation
- 8 Windfall gains from importing
- 9 The international value of the piaster
- 10 Vietnam foreign assistance
- 11 Financing public expenditures
- 12 The fiscal dilemma
- 13 Foreign aid and economic development in an environment of high military threat
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The wartime economy of South Vietnam was foremost an aid economy. This relatively underdeveloped country could not possibly have met the demands of a long and destabilizing war out of its own resources, and the glue used to hold the country together was foreign aid. Foreign aid is a concept, like charity, with which almost everyone is familiar, but its meaning in the Vietnam situation is not clear. The reason is that the United States reserved some of what it reportedly gave to the Vietnamese for its own purposes, and whether or not this kind of “gift” should be called aid is a controversial issue. In this chapter we propose a concept of aid that is at variance with officially recorded statistics and attempt to measure it by that definition. In the next chapter we shall discuss the efficiency of aid in Vietnam public finance.
10.1 Defining aid
In discussing Vietnam aid, two kinds of problems arise: (1) the conceptual problem of specifying what aid is, and (2) the problem of accounting for aid, or measuring it. The following discussion will show that neither of these problems has a neat and definitive solution.
Among other things, aid can be considered as international charity. In giving charity, the donor presumably expects no reward other than the satisfaction gained from helping someone else.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Foreign Aid, War, and Economic DevelopmentSouth Vietnam, 1955–1975, pp. 192 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986