Project-Level Aid Database

The Project-Level Aid (PLAID) database contains hundreds of thousands of development projects financed by bilateral and multilateral donors from 1970 - 2006. It is on track to become one of the most comprehensive development aid databases available. The principal investigators are Robert Hicks, Michael Tierney, and J. Timmons Roberts from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Daniel Nielson, Darren Hawkins, Mike Findley, Sven Wilson from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah and Bradley Parks, of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The PLAID database is being updated and thus is not currently available to the public. However, plans have been made for a public launch in early 2010.

The PLAID database is made up of detailed information about each development finance donation committed by donor governments in the system. In an effort to augment rather than replace existing aid databases, PLAID pulls many projects directly from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee's (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS). However, PLAID also works to include aid information that falls outside the official development assistance (ODA) requirement as well as the many donors who are not members of the OECD. In addition, PLAID data is coded for easy analysis of a number of individual sectors, such as the projected environmental or health impacts of a given project. The BYU team is also currently developing a modification of the CRS sector codes which allows for the classification of projects with multiple purposes.

In addition to its value to the development community, PLAID has been and continues to be an important tool for undergraduate training in international political economy and research. To date, nearly ninety students have been involved in research and database management, and at least six undergraduate students have authored or co-authored papers that they have presented at professional conferences in political science, including the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association, and the Midwest Political Science Association.

WM PLAID website: [1]

BYU PLAID website: [2]