Proponents of the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in impact evaluation and development research often point out the close link between these trials and their clinical counterparts in the world of medical research.
The Rethinking US Development Policy team has launched a new tool: “US Development Initiatives: Where in The World Are They?” This allows users to geographically explore US development policy efforts as well as the quantity of aid commitments, and the magnitude of trade and investment.
My guest this week, behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan, is a Harvard professor and non-resident fellow at CGD who is transforming how people think about poverty, and what can be done to support poor people in improving their lives. Sendhil was recently at CGD to discuss his new book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, in which he explains that limited bandwidth—the ability to stand back from one’s life, assess trade-offs, and make rational choices—is a problem for all of us, but an especially difficult problem for those who live daily with scarcity.
Following its recent 90 percent GDP adjustment, Nigeria is now a solidly middle-income country. With an income per capita of $2,700, it now stands alongside countries like the Philippines and Morocco. Not exactly a rich country per se, but with a GDP of roughly $500 billion, it’s far from an impoverished one in terms of national resources. With donors providing $2 billion a year in aid to Nigeria, this raises the natural question: If Nigeria is significantly wealthier than previously thought, then should we still be providing large-scale assistance there?
A set of more or less arbitrary lines continues to do very strange things to discussions about development.
I have always chafed at the idea of “capacity building” – a donor fallback in developing countries whenever progress on a donor-financed project is slow. Too much of what donors mean by capacity building has turned out to be training sessions, workshops, and nice trips of mid-level technical staff from low-income countries to Paris, London and Washington.
The President’s Budget Request for FY 2015 proposes flat funding for international affairs but it contains priorities and policy reversals that have led at least one observer to describe it as edgy! And indeed, it is edgy on a number of fronts, including a proposal by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to pilot Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid).
It would be strange to try learning how to play music without listening to musicians. Similarly, learning about results-based aid programs requires listening to people who design and implement them. That is just what we did last week in a set of workshops about implementing programs that pay for results – programs which apply some or all of the principles that we’ve discussed here at the Center as Cash on Delivery Aid. As a result of discussing real experiences, we discovered that some of the challenges are quite different than we had anticipated while a number of common concerns have simply failed to materialize.
Politicians and agency officials are always morally indignant when it comes to corruption in foreign aid, pointing to elaborate procedures and investigative offices to prove that they are “tough” and calling for zero tolerance (most recently here and here). However, for most governments and agencies, corruption is only a problem when it is discovered. That is when it becomes an obstacle to disbursing funds and keeping business moving.
“The Rebirth of Education” by Lant Pritchett is a must read for anyone who is thinking about social services of any kind. The book specifically addresses education, but the core argument is to think beyond improving education (or social services) to ask what kind of system will improve education (or social services).