Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog

In my first blog on recently published impact evaluations by the MCC, I argued that MCC has established a new standard for systematic learning about development programs. In my second blog, I addressed questions related to the design and use of impact evaluations.

MCC recently published five impact evaluations on farmer training programs – the first of many because MCC, unlike most other development agencies, is conducting such studies for about 40 percent of its portfolio. I would argue that this makes MCC the biggest experiment in evaluation: an entire agency committed to seriously produce impact evaluations on a large share of its operations and publicly disseminate them.

This is a joint post with Christina Droggitis.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a trailblazing U.S. development agency, is doing the right thing by publicly releasing impact evaluations of its programs as they are completed. Will politicians punish the MCC, using what will surely be mixed evaluations as a stick to beat it and an excuse to cut funding? If so, this will have a chilling effect on the movement to improve evaluation of U.S. development programs more broadly. Luckily, a new study of recent experience in Mexico offers some hope that politicians can resist this temptation.

A recent CGD working paper by Miguel Szekely, Toward Results-Based Social Policy Design and Implementation, describes how Mexico has institutionalized evaluation (and impact evaluations) into its policymaking processes. While there is still much to do, the paper shows how far Mexico has progressed in the last 15 years – not just in terms of conducting and publishing evaluations but more importantly by insisting on disseminating data and evidence regardless of the potential for short term political fallout if the results are negative.