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The Road to Results : Designing and Conducting Effective Development Evaluations

(World Bank, 2009-12-01) Morra Imas, Linda G. ; Rist, Ray C.

The analytical, conceptual, and political framework of development is changing dramatically. The new development agenda calls for broader understandings of sectors, countries, development strategies, and policies. It emphasizes learning and continuous feedback at all phases of the development cycle. As the development agenda grows in scope and complexity, development evaluation follows suit. Development evaluator are moving away from traditional implementation and output-focused evaluation models toward results-based evaluation models, as the development community calls for results and embraces the millennium development goals. As the development community shifts its focus away from projects in order to comprehensively address country challenges, development evaluators are seeking methods with which to assess results at the country, sector, theme, policy, and even global levels. As the development community recognizes the importance of not only a comprehensive but also a coordinated approach to developing country challenges and emphasizes partnerships, development evaluators are increasingly engaged in joint evaluations. These joint evaluations, while advantageous in many respects, add to the complexity of development evaluation (OECD 2006). Additionally, development evaluators increasingly face the measurement challenge of determining the performance of an individual development organization in this broader context and of identifying its contribution. This text is intended as a tool for use in building development evaluation capacity. It aims to help development evaluators think about and explore the new evaluation architecture and especially to design and conduct evaluations that focus on results in meeting the challenges of development.
Improving Food Security in Arab Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009) World Bank ; FAO ; IFAD

This joint working paper lays out a rationale and strategic framework for improving food security and managing food-price shocks in the Arab countries. The paper does not provide country specific policy and project recommendations. Such recommendations will follow from the country by country application of the framework, taking into account each country's political and cultural preferences, resource endowments, and risk tolerance. In 2007 and the first half of 2008, a sharp rise in agricultural commodity and food prices triggered grave concerns about food security, malnutrition and increased poverty throughout the world. While the threat of a prolonged food-price shock receded with falling energy and commodity prices and a weakening global economy in the second half of 2008, many factors underlying the volatility in food prices appear here to stay and will require careful management if the world is to avoid future food-price shocks. This paper suggests three critical strategies that, together, can serve as pillars to help offset future vulnerability to price shocks: a) strengthen safety nets, provide people with better access to family planning services, and promote education; b) enhance the food supply provided by domestic agriculture and improve rural livelihoods by addressing lagging productivity growth through increased investment in research and development; and c) reduce exposure to market volatility by improving supply chain efficiency and by more effectively using financial instruments to hedge risk.
Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009) Fiszbein, Ariel ; Schady, Norbert ; Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Grosh, Margaret ; Keleher, Niall ; Olinto, Pedro ; Skoufias, Emmanuel

The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries. Offsetting adjustments that could have blunted the impact of transfers, such as reductions in the labor market participation of beneficiaries, have been relatively modest. Moreover, CCT programs often have provided an entry point to reforming badly targeted subsidies and upgrading the quality of safety nets. The report thus argues that CCTs have been an effective way to redistribute income to the poor, while recognizing that even the best-designed and best-managed program cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. CCTs therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs and social pensions. The report also considers the rationale for conditioning the transfers on the use of specific health and education services by program beneficiaries. Conditions can be justified if households are under investing in the human capital of their children, for example, if they hold incorrect beliefs about the returns to these investments; if there is "incomplete altruism" between parents and their children; or if there are large externalities to investments in health and education. Political economy considerations also may favor conditional over unconditional transfers: taxpayers may be more likely to support transfers to the poor if they are linked to efforts to overcome poverty in the long term, particularly when the efforts involve actions to improve the welfare of children.
Annual Review of Development Effectiveness 2008 : Shared Global Challenges

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) Independent Evaluation Group

This year's annual review of development effectiveness focuses on assessing the World Bank's development effectiveness, with special attention to global public goods. It notes some encouraging developments. Project performance has improved over the medium term; country programs have worked relatively well in several large nations that house a majority of the world's poor; and the Bank has increased attention to collective international action on global public goods and advocated effectively on some of those important challenges. But work is required to remedy weaknesses. Notably there is a need to go beyond the Bank's country- based model when tackling issues where the perceived local and national benefits of action do not match global benefits from collective action. Attention should be paid to improving weak performance of country programs in smaller states and those with extensive poverty, and redressing shortcomings in applying monitoring and evaluation in projects and country programs. Over the next decade and beyond, the success of the international community and the World Bank Group in rising to the shared global challenges of our time will be crucial to reducing poverty and, indeed, to solving the looming challenges the world collectively faces.
World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development

(Washington, DC, 2007) World Bank

The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. World Development Report 2008 seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions: How has agriculture changed in developing countries in the past 20 years? What are the important new challenges and opportunities for agriculture? Which new sources of agricultural growth can be captured cost effectively in particular in poor countries with large agricultural sectors as in Africa? How can agricultural growth be made more effective for poverty reduction? How can governments facilitate the transition of large populations out of agriculture, without simply transferring the burden of rural poverty to urban areas? How can the natural resource endowment for agriculture be protected? How can agriculture's negative environmental effects be contained? This year's report marks the 30th year the World Bank has been publishing the World Development Report.
Pension Reform and the Development of Pension Systems : An Evaluation of World Bank Assistance

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006) Independent Evaluation Group

This report analyzes the Bank's assistance to support pension reform to determine if the Bank's strategy was relevant and if it was followed. The evaluation assesses whether pension reform decisions reflected best practice guidelines at entry, and whether Bank-assisted reforms achieved their social, macroeconomic, and financial objectives. The report also evaluates the Bank's assistance in building institutional capacity, coordinating within the Bank, and cooperating with other international organizations. Finally, the evaluation summarizes these findings and presents specific recommendations for the future.
The World Bank Annual Report 2005: Year in Review, Volume 1

(Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank

This World Bank Annual Report highlights the focus of the Bank activities in addressing worldwide poverty, describing the Bank work in promoting sustainable, economic growth, and in channeling needed services to poor people. Also detailed is the Bank's work toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); its institutional and global efforts toward effective development; and, its outreach to clients through Public Information Centers, and on the Web. Regional Perspectives are reviewed, through a breakdown of the Bank's lending and activities across the developing world, featuring highlights of projects in borrowing countries within each of the Bank's six regions. The Summary of Fiscal Year Activities provides a description of the Bank's development knowledge-sharing over the fiscal year 2005; a discussion of the Bank's approach to lending in low income, and middle-income countries; the Bank's resources; and a summary of the Bank's lending by region, theme, and sector, such as environmental programs and infrastructure projects. This section also describes the Bank's partnerships with public, private, and civil society stakeholders. The fiscal 2005 financial statements, organizational information, income by region, new operations approved in fiscal 2005, and various lending data are included on a CD inserted inside the back cover of this report.
Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century

(Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank

The book presents estimates of total wealth for nearly 120 countries, using economic theory to decompose the wealth of a nation into its component pieces: produced capital, natural resources and human resources. The wealth estimates aims to provide a unique opportunity to look at economic management from a broader and comprehensive perspective. The book's basic tenet is that economic development can be conceived as a process of portfolio management, so that sustainability becomes an integral part of economic policy making. The rigorous analysis, presented in accessible format, tackles issues such as growth, development and equity. This publication is organized in four sections. The first part introduces the wealth estimates and highlights the main facts on the level and composition of wealth across countries. The second part analyzes changes in wealth and how they matter for economic policy. The third part deals with the level of wealth, its composition and links to growth and inequality. The fourth part reviews existing applications of resource and environmental accounting.
Tunisia : Understanding Successful Socioeconomic Development, A Joint World Bank–Islamic Development Bank Evaluation of Assistance

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005) World Bank ; Islamic Development Bank

Tunisia has successfully shifted from resource-based exports dominated by oil and gas to manufactures and services. The economy is now driven mainly by textile, electrical, mechanical, and food processing exports; tourism and related activities; and production of olives and cereals. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has been rising consistently, increasing from 3 percent annually over 1985-90 to more than 5 percent annually over 1996-02. Today, with a per capita income of US$2,000, Tunisians enjoy more than two-and-a-half times the real incomes that their parents had 30 years ago. Tunisia signed an association agreement with the European Union (EUAA) that provides for free trade in manufacturing by 2008. The European Union (EU) has been Tunisia's dominant trading partner; the region is the source of 67 percent of capital flows into Tunisia, accounts for a large share of Tunisia's tourism market, and is the region with the largest community of expatriate Tunisians. This dominance renders Tunisia's economy vulnerable to adverse developments in the EU.
Jordan - Poverty Assessment (Vol. 2 of 2) : Main Report

(Washington, DC, 2004-12) World Bank

This report assesses poverty in Jordan in 2002-03, and examines the changes that have occurred since 1997 as a result of economic growth and the income distribution policies of the Government of Jordan. The study concludes that poverty declined in Jordan in that time period, no matter which poverty line one chooses to use, and was made possible with an equally remarkable growth in per capita private consumption, in which the poor participated, at about 3.5 percent a year. The fast rise in private consumption appears to be due to a recovery in consumption trends that is mainly policy driven. The report, however, identifies some concerns about the sustainability of poverty reduction, and recommends that long-term policy focus more on regional imbalances in development; improve access of the poor in education, health, and jobs; plug the leakage in government transfer programs; and institute poverty monitoring systems for timely remedial action.