The aid equation: Who should decide how development dollars are spent?
Monash Business School PhD candidate Jack Hennessy.
8 October 2026
For decades, the aid sector has championed the merits of giving recipient countries and communities a greater say in how assistance is designed and delivered.
Yet when Jack Hennessy, Chief Economist at The Fred Hollows Foundation, looked for evidence of what aid recipients themselves value, he found a surprising silence.
“I’d read a few papers and interviews looking at perspectives of local policymakers or program managers, but I had never read anything about what community members and aid recipients themselves might want,” Mr Hennessy said.
“I thought, surely that’s an important voice that’s missing from this conversation?”
That question became the starting point for his doctoral research with the Centre for Health Economics at Monash Business School.
“I want to understand how donor countries and recipient countries can better align delivery of development aid to give recipients what they actually want and achieve greater aid effectiveness as a result,” he said.
Putting preferences to the test
The first chapter of his thesis exposed a blind spot in the literature. A systematic review of 58 studies showed donor perspectives were far better documented than those of aid recipients.
His second chapter put donor preferences to the test, surveying 1,523 Australians aged 18 and over about Australia’s health aid
Participants were presented with hypothetical aid programs that varied across 10 characteristics, including control, effectiveness, targeting and delivery.
His third chapter then turned the question around, examining the views of 1,518 potential aid beneficiaries in Indonesia.
“We use responses to drill down and quantify what is most important to people, and groups of people, characterised by things like age, sex, and income,” Mr Hennessy said.
Control versus consequences
The two studies reveal a clear divide.
Donors favoured donor-led development, even though those projects may be less effective.
Aid recipients, on the other hand, were less concerned about control than they were about where aid was targeted and whether it worked.
Associate Professor Duncan Mortimer, Mr Hennessy’s supervisor, said the research addressed important questions in aid policy: how foreign aid should be spent, and who should make decisions and take responsibility for implementation.
“It has given us a detailed understanding of how both donors and recipients think about these questions, identifying common ground and clear differences between donor and recipient views,” A/Prof Mortimer said.
“Donor-led projects that are inconsistent with recipient preferences may suffer from implementation challenges and poor uptake.”
From evidence to action
Mr Hennessy hopes the research will give a voice to aid recipients who are too often left out of decisions that directly affect their lives.
“If we can get closer to alignment of donor and recipient preferences, we’re one step closer to achieving greater aid effectiveness and real improvements in the health, quality of life, and economic outcomes of aid-recipient countries,” he said.
He is keen to extend the study to other developing regions.
“We were the first ones to do this type of work, and I would love to see how results look in different settings, such as the Pacific and Africa,” Mr Hennessy said.
“I’m excited to see research being used in resource-constrained settings to drive policy change, and the positive flow-on impact on the lives of people around the world.”