aid

Management by way of top-down controls and targets sometimes gets in the way of aid donors’ aims, undermining project success. These unhelpful controls often stem from a need to account for performance; legislatures or executive boards induce agencies to exercise tight process controls and ori...

This paper explores how donors can move towards greater Navigation by Judgment, highlighting the actions people inside and outside aid agencies can work to make change—encouraging more Navigation by Judgment on the margin, starting today. 

As countries grow economically, governments face rapidly growing demands for quality, affordable, accessible, and equitable healthcare and other social services. At the same time, many middle-income countries face the prospect of transitioning away from donor aid, adding pressure to already-constrai...

This paper illustrates the tradeoff between country ownership and funders’ priorities with a formal model in which aid is governed by a contract to produce a jointly desired outcome. The model generalizes the Principal-Agent approaches for studying aid which treat countries as having multiple ...