Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Chancellor Gordon Brown and rock stars like U2's Bono may be doing more harm than good when they advocate massive foreign-aid increases to end world poverty.

There is no evidence big aid plans ever promote economic growth, and in fact they often reinforce corrupt governments and stymie democracy, former World Bank economist William Easterly writes in ``The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.''

Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, doesn't oppose aid to the poor. He cites numerous examples -- especially in health, such as vaccinations and curing river blindness -- of how it can work well. Overall, though, the international aid industry is deeply flawed. It focuses on ``big plans'' rather than results, according to Easterly, and it tells the poor what they need rather than supplies what they want.

``Sixty years of countless reform schemes to aid agencies and dozens of different plans, and $2.3 trillion later, the aid industry is still failing to reach the beautiful goal,'' Easterly writes. ``The evidence points to an unpopular conclusion: Big Plans will always fail to reach the beautiful goal.''

The latest drive toward a Marshall Plan for the poor has been inspired by the writings of Jeffrey Sachs, whose ``The End of Poverty'' argued that the poorest countries need a big push from international aid to get out of their poverty trap.

Citing numerous studies by the International Monetary Fund and academics, Easterly calls that theory bunk. Aid didn't play an important role in the economic takeoff of Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, while other nations that did receive significant aid failed to grow.

Corrupt Regimes

The IMF and the World Bank have lent to corrupt regimes and imposed stringent conditions that caused living standards to fall and failed to boost growth. External aid can be as destructive to economic performance, not to mention moral standards, as a sudden influx of oil revenue, Easterly says.

Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire, a contender for the worst government in African history, collected $20 billion in foreign aid, while Haiti received the most IMF standby loans in the past 50 years, with 20 of the 22 total loans coming during the rule of the Duvalier family. Per-capita income fell, while violence and lawlessness skyrocketed.

``High aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid,'' Easterly says.

Attractive `Plans'

The ``Big Plan,'' of the type that Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced at last year's Group of Eight summit, is reminiscent of the social engineering of the five-year plans in the Soviet Union and, ironically, of the failed shock-therapy programs to move from communism to capitalism, Easterly writes.

Such plans, whether providing aid or imposing democracy, are attractive because they reinforce the view that the West can lead the rest of the world out of darkness and assuage Western guilt.

``Something must be done; anything must be done, whether or not it works,'' Easterly quotes Bob Geldof saying. Geldof, chief organizer of the 1985 Live Aid concerts for Ethiopian famine victims, was the driving force behind the Live 8 benefit concerts tied to the Group of Eight summit July 6-8, 2005.

Accountability is a key problem, because aid agencies often aren't forced to face the consequences when programs fail. Their constituencies aren't the poor who should benefit from their programs, but the public and governments who fund them.

``It is strange that aid agencies talk so much these days about `good governance' in the recipient countries without worrying about `good governance' of their own aid projects,'' he says.

Independent Evaluations

One way around this, Easterly suggests, is that aid agencies themselves pay for independent evaluations of their projects.

Easterly also criticizes the focus of aid programs on treating of suffers of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, rather than on its prevention. He argues that in a world of tight international aid, funds needed for preventing the illness are too often spent on treatment.

``Instead of spending ten billion dollars on treatment over the next three years, money could be spent on preventing AIDS from spreading from the 28 million HIV-positive Aricans to the 644 million HIV-negative Africans,'' he writes.

Aid is effective when local people choose it and when it has specific goals that can be monitored, such as in health care. Jimmy Carter has had great success in reducing river blindness in West Africa, and Bill Gates is targeting much of his funds to improved health.

``Put the focus where it belongs,'' Easterly writes. ``Get the poorest people in the world such obvious goods as the vaccines, the antibiotics, the food supplements, the improved seeds, the fertilizer, the roads, the boreholes, the water pipes, the textbooks and the nurses.''

``The White Man's Burden'' is published by Penguin Press (448 pages, $27.95, 16.99 pounds).

(Karl Maier is an editor for Bloomberg News. The views expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Karl Maier in Khartoum kmaier2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 30, 2006 12:11 EST