How effective development food aid is when used to address complex problems of food security in the developing world remains up for debate. This paper seeks to answer the primary question of whether increased development food assistance actually reduces the overall number of hungry people in recipient countries. Secondary questions addressed are a) whether food assistance provided by the United States, other OECD countries, or the international community is most effective at alleviating hunger, and b) to which factors is food assistance most respondent? A panel dataset containing indicators for 62 developing countries during the time period 2005-2015 is analyzed using fixed-effects and Arellano-Bond generalized methods of moments (GMM) models that control for time-invariant heterogeneity and autocorrelation. Aid flows are disaggregated by donor group, and examined individually within the same econometric framework to uncover differences. The study finds that increasing development food assistance to a country resulted in a reduced undernourished population over the 11-year time period. Further, development food aid from multilateral donor groups like the UN proved more effective in reducing hunger in beneficiary nations than similar assistance from bilateral donors. Finally, aid from the examined donor entities responded dissimilarly to metrics such as undernourishment, world commodity prices, and political stability and violence indicators in the target country.

Acknowledgments 2
Abstract 3
List of Acronyms 5
List of Figures 6
1. Introduction 7
i. Motivations 7
ii. Overview of Development Assistance 9
iii. Literature Review 14
2. Methodology 18
i. Conceptual Framework 19
ii. Econometric Models 22
iii. Tests 25
3. Data 28
4. Results 36
i. Impact of Food Assistance on Undernourishment 36
ii. Drivers of Food Assistance 43
5. Conclusion 47
i. Findings in Context of Existing Literature 48
ii. Potential for Continued Study 49
References 51
Appendix A 55
Appendix B 57

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