Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
How big is a big effect size? In a new paper, David Evans and Fei Yuan examine more than 150 randomized controlled trials in low- and middle-income countries and standardize the effect sizes to provide a better understanding of the real impact of learning outcomes.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of volunteers in South Asia and East Africa walk many miles crossing rivers, mountains, deserts and farmlands to do something amazing: reach remote rural communities to assess whether children can read or do simple maths. Collectively known as Citizen-led Assessments (CLA), every year they show that most children are going to school but less than half of them can read or write at grade level. However, in spite of these universally damning reports, policy change to improve children’s learning has been painfully slow. So the NGO Pratham that started this movement is turning its army of volunteer data collectors into change agents to mobilize entire communities and raise awareness about the learning crisis across India.
Last week CGD released a new working paper that I’ve been working on—together with my co-authors Tessa Bold, Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu, and Alice Ng’ang’a—since I was a grad student in 2007. “Scaling Up What Works: Experimental Evidence on External Validity
I am pleased to share with our readers at Owen’s request this discussion of Cash on Delivery Aid, which appeared yesterday on his blog, Owen Abroad.
Linking Aid to Results: Why Are Some Development Workers Anxious?
By Owen Barder
The Center for Global Development is working on an idea which they call Cash on Delivery aid, in which donors make a binding commitment to developing country governments to provide aid according to the outputs that the government delivers. I think this is a good idea in principle, and hope that it can be tested to see whether and how it could work in practice. The UK Conservative party have said in their Green Paper that if they are elected they will use Cash on Delivery to link aid to results.
Linking aid more closely to results is attractive from many different perspectives. My own view is that linking aid directly to results will help to change the politics of aid for donors. Many of the most egregiously ineffective behaviours in aid are a direct result of donors’ (very proper) need to show to their taxpayers how money has been used. Because traditional aid is not directly linked to results, donors end up focusing on inputs and micromanaging how aid is spent instead, with all the obvious consequences for transactions costs, poor alignment with developing countries systems and priorities and lack of harmonisation. If we could link aid more directly to results, I think donors will be freed from many of the political pressures they currently face to deliver aid badly; and it would be politically easier to defend large increases in aid budgets.
CGD recently posted my working paper, The Illusion of Equality, co-authored by Martina Viarengo. The motivations behind the paper go back to when I was a kid. When people were coming to our house, my mother would put us five children to work trying to clean up because “company” was coming. And when company was there, we were put on our best behavior (or out of sight).
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