Story of the hurricane: Government, NGOs, and the difference in disaster relief targeting

After catastrophes, international donors offering assistance must decide whether to channel resources via the local government or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). We examine how these channels differ in targeting aid by combining survey data on aid received by Nicaraguan households before and after Hurricane Mitch. In the short term, NGOs provided aid according to hurricane severity, while government aid allocations were not significantly higher in the hardest hit areas. However, government-provided aid matched that of NGOs several years later. Despite the lag in government aid, we do not find evidence of political manipulation of relief aid in either the short or long-term.