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"Economic assistance Developing countries Evaluation."
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Foreign Aid Allocation, Governance, and Economic Growth
How important is foreign aid in fostering economic growth in developing countries? Does it help recipient countries, hurt them, or have little effect either way?Foreign Aid Allocation, Governance, and Economic Growthinvestigates this issue by looking at foreign aid by sector rather than treating it as an aggregate amount. Aid can be allocated to a recipient's production sectors (such as agriculture, manufacturing, or mining), economic infrastructure (such as transport, storage, or communications networks or power generation facilities), or social sectors (such as education or healthcare). This book differentiates among various channels through which each of these three categories of foreign aid affects economic growth.
The findings suggest that economic aid, including aid to production sectors and economic infrastructure, contributes to economic growth by increasing domestic investment. Aid to social sectors, however, does not appear to have a significant impact on human capital (measured by school enrollment) and economic growth. This study also assesses the degree to which the quality of democratic governance in a recipient country influences foreign aid's effectiveness and finds that democracy is no guarantee of aid effectiveness. In fact, economic aid to less democratic countries can lead to better economic growth, at least initially, provided the aid recipients secure property rights and allow capital accumulation. Although further research into the question is necessary,Foreign Aid Allocation, Governance, and Economic Growthsuggests that aid targeted to increasing domestic investment might be an effective means of fostering economic growth in less developed countries.
eBook
The other side of the coin : the comparative evidence of cash and in-kind transfers in humanitarian situations
\"Over 60 million people are currently displaced due to conflict or violence, and about 140 million are exposed to natural disasters. As part of humanitarian responses to those affected populations, growing attention is paid to cash transfers as a form of assistance. Cash is being strongly advocated by several actors, and for good reasons: they have the potential to provide choice, empower people, and spark economic multipliers. But what is their comparative performance relative to in-kind transfers? Are there objectives for which there are particular evidence gaps? And what should be considered when choosing between those forms of assistance? This paper is one of the first reviews examining those questions across humanitarian sectors and in relation to multiple forms of assistance, including cash, vouchers, and in-kind assistance (food and non-food). These were assessed based on solid impact evaluations and through the lens of food security, nutrition, livelihoods, health, education, and shelter objectives. The paper finds that there is large variance in the availability of comparative evidence across sectors. This ranges from areas where evidence is substantial (i.e., food security) to realms where it is limited (i.e., nutrition) or where not a single comparative evaluation was available (i.e., health, education, and shelter). Where evidence is substantial, data shows that the effectiveness of cash and in-kind transfers is similar on average. In terms of costs, cash is generally more efficient to delivery. However, overall costs would hinge on the scale of interventions, crisis context, procurement practices, and a range of 'hidden costs'. In other words, the appropriateness of transfers cannot be predetermined and should emerge from response analysis that considers program objectives, the level of market functionality, predicted cost-effectiveness, implementation capacity, the management of key risks such as on protection and gender, political economy, beneficiary preferences, and resource availability. Finally, it seems possible (and necessary) to reconcile humanitarian imperatives with solid research to inform decision-making, especially on dimensions beyond food security\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
The impact of macroeconomic policies on poverty and income distribution : macro-micro evaluation techniques and tools
A companion to the bestseller, The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution, this title deals with theoretical challenges and cutting-edge macro-micro linkage models. The authors compare the predictive and analytical power of various macro-micro linkage techniques using the traditional RHG approach as a benchmark to evaluate standard policies, such as, a typical stabilization package and a typical structural reform policy.
eBook
The effectiveness of World Bank support for community-based and -driven development : an OED evaluation
Participatory approaches that involve local communities in their own development have gained substantial support among international donors over the past quarter-century and have become increasingly important in the work of the World Bank. Community participation is an approach to development that can be used with any Bank lending instrument and across sectors. Projects can involve communities in different waysby sharing information, consulting, collaborating, or empowering them. The process of involving communities in project activities is also expected to contribute in most cases to community capacity enhancement.
eBook
Evaluating social funds : a cross-country analysis of community investments
Introduced in Bolivia a little over a decade ago, social funds have become a key community-led poverty reduction tool. A departure from traditional government-sponsored approaches, social funds encourage communities and local institutions to take the lead in identifying and carrying out small-scale investments, generally in social infrastructure such as schools, health clinics, and small-scale water supply and sanitation. The social fund model has proved to be a dynamic, replicable approach, easily adapted and scaled up in diverse countries around the world. In Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia, social funds have now absorbed close to $10 billion in foreign and domestic financing. Despite their popularity, the effectiveness of social funds as a mechanism for improving welfare has remained largely unmeasured. This study is the first systematic cross-country impact evaluation of social funds using survey data and accepted evaluation methodologies. The research, carried out in Armenia, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Zambia, addresses four fundamental questions: Do social funds reach poor areas and poor households? Do social funds deliver high-quality, sustainable investments? Do social funds affect living standards? How cost-efficient are social funds and the investments they finance, compared with other delivery mechanisms?The result of important new World Bank research, this book will be of interest to social policy practitioners and analysts, to academics and students of development, and to anyone interested in current thinking on poverty reduction strategies.
eBook
Poverty reduction support credits : an evaluation of World Bank support
This evaluation examines the relevance and effectiveness of Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs), introduced by the Bank in early 2001 to support comprehensive growth, improve social conditions, and reduce poverty in IDA countries. PRSCs were intended to allow greater country-ownership, provide more predictable annual support, exhibit more flexible conditionality, and strengthen budget processes in a results-based framework. By September 2009, the Bank had approved 99 PRSCs totaling some 7.5 billion and representing 38% percent of IDA policy based lending. The evaluation finds that in terms of process, PRSCs were effective in easing conditionality, increasing country ownership and aid predictability, stimulating dialogue between central and sectoral ministries, and improving donor harmonization. In terms of content, PRSCs succeeded in emphasizing public sector management and pro-poor service delivery. Yet in terms of results, it is difficult to distinguish growth and poverty outcomes in countries with PRSCs from other better performing IDA countries. There is scope for further simplifying the language of conditionality and underpinning PRSCs with better pro-poor growth diagnostics. PRSCs can also strengthen their results frameworks and limit sector policy content in multi-sector DPLs to high-level or cross-cutting issues. Today, Bank policy has subsumed PRSCs under the broader mantle of Development Policy Lending and the rationale for a separate brand name although differences linger from the past. Since PRSCs and other policy-based lending have gradually converged in design, remaining differences compared to other Development Policy Loans should be clearly spelled out, or the separate PRSC brand name should be phased out.
eBook
The poverty reduction strategy initiative : an independent evaluation of the World Bank's support through 2003
This book provides an independent assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative for the World Bank as well as the broader development community. It offers a frank and in-depth review of the progress thus far, with particular focus on the role and effectiveness of the Bank’s support, drawing from extensive discussions with national stakeholders in Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSP) countries, research and analytical work, and country case study reports on ten PRSP countries: Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Tajikistan, Tanzania, and Vietnam. The author of The Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative concludes that the Initiative has led to improvements in national strategies and processes in some low-income countries, such as an increased poverty focus, a higher profile for monitoring results, and better donor-government dialogue. However, the contribution to broad poverty reduction, especially in more difficult country environments, is largely in jeopardy without significant changes. The author argues that the Initiative should be reoriented toward improving domestic processes and less on completion of documents, customizing the approach to particular country circumstances, filling analytical gaps to better understand which actions will provide the greatest poverty pay-off, and making sure the assistance programs of external partners are anchored in the country's poverty reduction strategy.
eBook
Urban environment and infrastructure : toward livable cities
The brown agenda or urban environmental issues became an important part of the international policy agenda following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992). Urban environmental issues continue to remain a major challenge in the cities of developing countries. The World Bank strengthened its focus on urban environmental management with the adoption of this brown agenda as part of the Bank’s urban livability program. Urban Environment and Infrastructure reviews the World Bank’s activities to improve urban environmental quality. It sets out the Bank’s expanded brown agenda and emphasizes the crucial importance of infrastructure and environmental interventions in order to improve livability in cities in developing countries. The World Bank has more than US$12 billion worth of active commitments aimed at improving urban environmental quality. While the Bank’s investments are directed at much needed basic environmental services especially for the urban poor, the challenge of improving urban environment or livability in large cities needs further attention. Increasing climate variability, its impacts, especially sea-level rise, and urban impacts of natural disasters are becoming more and more part of the daily challenges facing cities in the developing world, seventy percent of which are located on the coasts. The volume provides pragmatic recommendations on how to deal with the challenge of this expanded brown agenda.
eBook