ideas about development
On 12 April, the World Bank hosted a panel discussion to consider a number of pressing questions relating to development effectiveness on the back of the Australian Aid Review, as Australia looks to scale up its its aid budget. Does aid work? Does it reach the poorest people? What are the most effective channels for delivering aid? And how do we make it work better? This is part of the Praxis Discussion Series, 2012. (Recorded on April [...] Read more »
Imperfect information on the delivery of basic services make its difficult for policy-makers to manage principal-agent problems in the delivery chain and for recipients to hold their governments accountable. Crowdsourced information can help to fix feedback loops and new technologies and apps are making this feasible. I wanted to test out one of the most talked about platforms–Ushahidi. So before a recent trip to PNG I set up the FixMyRoad website using Crowdmap–a web-based version [...] Read more »
Tim Harford’s new book Adapt is essential reading for anyone interested in how to improve development aid. In this TEDTalk, Tim worries about the prevalence of the ‘God complex’ among politicians, doctors and economists in a world where problems and their solutions are multifaceted and complex. Tim is a big fan of adaptation through variation and selection, trial and error, to find solutions to complex problems. His thesis is that in order to get closer [...] Read more »
It’s a myth that aid is static, there are some exciting changes taking place. What are the new innovations that are improving aid effectiveness in the 21st century aid? As you read this blog post, keep at the back of your mind the determinants of aid effectiveness. (For more on this see a new discussion paper by Stephen Howes.) We can improve the quality of recipients by selecting on the basis of performance and results, and (trying) to improve [...] Read more »
As a former treasury economist I’m always delighted when reviews put numbers around their recommendations. It is good for transparency and brings greater clarity. There’s a lot in Australia’s new Aid Review report to think about and the panel have made a compelling case on how to spend an increasing aid budget aid wisely. This blog takes a look at some of the numbers in their plan. How much extra aid? The Aid Review forecasts that the aid [...] Read more »
Simplicity is something that is rarely associated with aid, yet DFID have done an excellent job of summarising their aid review onto a single page. Many donors talk about focusing on results, this aid review identifies specific results for UK aid to deliver. And sets out how DFID will make UK aid work better. Read more »
Rigorous impact evaluations of technical assistance seem to be few and far between, but this one is worth reading. Many public programs and operations by multilateral organisations include technical assistance to the direct beneficiaries of the program in addition to pure financing. However, there is no substantial body of studies that calculates the additional impact; in the sense of exclusively attributable to, of technical assistance on the outcome of interest of the program. We propose [...] Read more »
Here is a key finding of a 2006 evaluation of ‘DFID-Funded Technical Co-operation for Economic Management in Sub-Saharan Africa.’ Did the provision of the outputs lead to results? Was any impact achieved either transactional or transformational? A consistent picture emerges across the case study examples. DFID’s TC support has contributed in many cases towards the development of improved systems and procedures (e.g. for budgeting, financial management, monitoring and evaluation, audit, payroll management) that if fully [...] Read more »
I’m attending a meeting today to discuss AusAID’s new Framework for regulating pay to advisers–one solution to the perennial problem of high cost technical assistance. What is the evidence on the effectiveness of TA? Here is a summary of some of the key points from Does Foreign Aid Really Work? According to OECD DAC, technical cooperation accounted fro over 36% of bilateral aid from DAC donors in 2004, and was more if TC in infrastructure [...] Read more »
Speaker Owen Barder from The Dial on Vimeo. A terrific talk by Owen Barder – here’s a quick summary what he said. We ought to be able to fix lack of predictability, yet it costs between 15 and 20 per of the value of aid. And tying of aid costs as much as 30 per cent of the value of aid. The proliferation of aid – projects and donors – since the 1970s is staggering. [...] Read more »
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