Evaluating the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in Bangladesh: Insights from a dynamic ARDL model analysis

The variables include GDP in current USD (gdp), capital stock (k), official development aid and assistance (oda), exports of goods and services (exp), labor, tertiary school enrollment (sch), and foreign direct investment inflows (fdi). The data were obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) database, and the UNCTAD database (accessed between June and November 2023). An exception applies to the capital stock variable (k), which was constructed as the sum of general government capital stock at current cost, private capital stock at current cost, and public–private partnership capital stock at current cost by following prior studies (e.g., Emam et al., 2021). Capital stock values for 2020–2022 were extrapolated using Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFC). In addition, missing values in school‑enrollment data were interpolated and converted into the sch variable using ((enrollment × population)/100)), approximating the population share in formal education.