Ideas to Action:

Independent research for global prosperity

Tag: Monitoring & Evaluation

 

Reinhart-Rogoff: The Problem and Solutions

4/25/13
Arvind Subramanian

Paraphrasing "jesting Pilate", "what is truth when academic superstars supposedly produce it?" is possibly the most important yet neglected question raised by the recent Reinhart-Rogoff (R-R) affair.

The essential facts of this episode are these: two Harvard professors, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, used their academic research to become strong advocates in the policy realm, although not among fellow academics, of the need for fiscal austerity when economies approach a threshold level of debt-to-GDP ratio of 90 per cent. Their superstar reputations (deservedly earned through previous work) rendered their advocacy influential, even highly so, in the charged policy debates in the United States and all over Europe. The research - especially the critical and attention-grabbing finding of a sharp growth discontinuity at that 90 per cent threshold - was subsequently exposed as flawed.

The Paper-to-Policy Pipeline: Reflections from Evidence Live 2013

4/4/13
Rachel Silverman

Alongside Victoria Fan, I recently attended the Evidence Live conference in Oxford, hosted by the BMJ and Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM). While the conference’s clinical focus was outside my normal global health/economics comfort zone, I was immensely impressed by the rigor, candor, and nuance of discussion, particularly around tough issues like publication bias and conflict of interest.

It’s Not About the Grade: MCC’s First Five Impact Evaluations

10/22/12
Sarah Jane Staats

It’s not about the grade, it’s about the learning say Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) officials as they prepare to release the US government’s first five* independent development impact evaluations tomorrow. Results will be mixed. They should be. But if the MCC and other development policymakers pay attention to what the impact evaluations tell them—and the MCC keeps its commitment to independent, rigorous evaluation across the rest of its programs—it will be really good news.

New Foreign Assistance Legislation Promotes Transparency and Accountability

10/14/11
Connie Veillette

This is a joint post with Will McKitterick.

In this season of budget battles and extreme partisanship, seeing eye to eye on the Hill is a rare commodity. Nevertheless, in an unusual moment of bipartisan agreement, Members of Congress introduced a bill that takes two big steps towards making U.S. foreign assistance more transparent, accountable, and effective.

Introduced by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Howard Berman (D-CA), the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2012 (H.R. 3159) achieved strong bipartisan backing from 30 cosponsors in the House. The bill follows in the footsteps of reform recommendations offered by the administration in the PPD and QDDR, and legislation introduced the 111th Congress.[1] Simply put, H.R. 3159 seeks to eliminate ineffective aid programs and bolster those that work by strengthening the government’s foreign assistance monitoring and evaluation regime. In doing so, it may also save the tax payer a pretty penny.

The New USAID Evaluation Policy is Not Getting Nearly Enough Attention

2/1/11
Nancy Birdsall

This is a joint post with Rita Perakis.

USAID’s new evaluation policy, announced by Raj Shah at a CGD event on January 19, and written about by Bill Savedoff already on this site here, is not getting nearly enough attention. It not only outlines a new policy. It amounts to fostering a new culture, of transparency and learning.

In a presentation on the new policy hosted yesterday by Carol Lancaster, Dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Ruth Levine of USAID said the new policy responds to the “need to learn” and to “generate accountability”, noting there can be tension between those two.

Here are things to like about it beyond what Bill already highlighted – with some notes of caution (the “buts” below):

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