Person:
Coville, Aidan

Last updated:December 8, 2025

Biography

Aidan is a Senior Economist in the Development Impact (DIME) department. After completing his MSc in Statistics at University College London and MSc in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford, he joined DIME in South Africa, exploring the effects of a large-scale slum upgrading project implemented across the country. He’s a Senior Economist focusing on identifying sustainable, equitable and efficient ways to expand water, sanitation, electricity and broadband services with the aim of reducing poverty and spurring climate-compatible economic growth.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/44054

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Now showing1 - 10 of 14

Effects of a Community-Driven Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Intervention on Diarrhea, Child Growth, and Local Institutions: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Rural Democratic Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-19) Quattrochi, John P; Croke, Kevin; Dohou, Caleb; Stanus Ghib, Luca; Lokaya, Yannick; Coville, Aidan; Mvukiyehe, Eric
Diarrhea and growth faltering in early childhood reduce survival and impair neurodevelopment. This paper assesses whether a national program in the Democratic Republic of Congo reduced diarrhea and stunting and strengthened local water and sanitation institutions. The program combined (i) funds for latrine and water upgrades, (ii) institutional strengthening activities, and (iii) behavior change campaigns. In 2018, the program was randomly assigned, after stratifying by province and cluster size, with 50 intervention and 71 control clusters. In 2022–23, 3,283 households were interviewed, at a median of 3.6 years post-intervention. The intervention had no effect on diarrhea and no effect on length-for-age Z-scores in children. Villages in the intervention group had a 0.40 higher score on the water, sanitation, and hygiene institutions index. The percentage of villages in the intervention group with an active water, sanitation, and hygiene (or just water) committee was 21 percentage points higher than the control group. Households in the intervention group were 24 percentage points more likely to report using an improved water source, 18 percentage points more likely to report using an improved sanitation facility, and reported more positive perceptions of water governance. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s national rural water, sanitation, and hygiene program increased access to improved water and sanitation infrastructure, and created new water, sanitation, and hygiene institutions, all of which persisted for more than three years. However, these effects were not sufficient to reduce diarrhea or growth faltering.
Local Knowledge, Formal Evidence, and Policy Decisions
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-10) Vivalt, Eva; Coville, Aidan; KC, Sampada
How do policymakers value advice from local experts versus formal evidence from impact evaluations when making policy decisions Using a discrete choice experiment conducted in collaboration with the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, we show that policymakers were willing to accept a program that had a 5.0 percentage point smaller estimated effect on enrollment rates if it were recommended by a local expert. They also preferred programs supported by evidence from a different region over programs supported by local evaluations only if the former had a 5.8 percentage point higher estimated impact. These premiums are large, surpassing the effects of many programs aimed at improving enrollment rates. This highlights the substantial weight that policymakers place on local evidence.
The Enduring Impacts of a Big Push during Multiple Crises: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-07) Bedoya, Guadalupe; Belyakova, Yulia; Coville, Aidan; Escande, Thomas; Isaqzadeh, Mohammad; Ndiaye, Aminata
How do proven strategies to improve the economic conditions of ultra-poor households hold up against the increasing severity and co-incidence of economic, security, and climate shocks Five years after receiving an economic livelihoods package, and shortly prior to the 2021 regime change, “ultra-poor” women in Afghanistan continued to have significantly higher levels of consumption, assets, market work participation, financial inclusion, children’s school enrollment, and women’s psychological well-being and empowerment, relative to the control group. Households boost resilience by diversifying productive activities and the program improves equality by reducing the gaps between ultra-poor and non-ultra- poor households across multiple dimensions. The results illustrate how an increasingly popular approach to improve the conditions of the very poor through a one-off “big push” intervention can strengthen household resilience through multiple shocks in one of the most fragile settings worldwide.
Program Targeting with Machine Learning and Mobile Phone Data: Evidence from an Anti-Poverty Intervention in Afghanistan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12) Aiken, Emily L.; Bedoya, Guadalupe; Blumenstock, Joshua E.; Coville, Aidan
Can mobile phone data improve program targeting By combining rich survey data from the baseline of a “big push” anti-poverty program in Afghanistan implemented in 2016 with detailed mobile phone logs from program beneficiaries, this paper studies the extent to which machine learning methods can accurately differentiate ultra-poor households eligible for program benefits from ineligible households. The paper shows that machine learning methods leveraging mobile phone data can identify ultra-poor households nearly as accurately as survey-based measures of consumption and wealth; and that combining survey-based measures with mobile phone data produces classifications more accurate than those based on a single data source.
Financing Municipal Water and Sanitation Services in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) Coville, Aidan; Galiani, Sebastian; Gertler, Paul; Yoshida, Susumu
This study estimates the impacts of two interventions implemented as field experiments in informal settlements by Nairobi’s water and sanitation utility to improve revenue collection efficiency and last mile connection loan repayment: (i) face-to-face engagement between utility staff and customers to encourage payment and (ii) contract enforcement for service disconnection due to nonpayment in the form of transparent and credible disconnection notices. While there is no effect of the engagement, the study finds large effects of enforcement on payment. There is no effect on access to water, perceptions of utility fairness or quality of service delivery, on the relationships between tenants and property owners, or on tenant mental well-being nine months after the intervention. To counterbalance the increase in payments, property owners increased rental income by renting out additional space. Taken together these results suggest that transparent contract enforcement was effective at improving revenue collection efficiency without incurring large social or political costs.
No Household Left Behind: Afghanistan Targeting the Ultra Poor Impact Evaluation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Bedoya, Guadalupe; Coville, Aidan; Haushofer, Johannes; Isaqzadeh, Mohammad; Shapiro, Jeremy
The share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 but has continued to increase in many fragile and conflict-affected areas where half of the extreme poor are expected to reside by 2030. These areas are also where the least evidence exists on how to tackle poverty. This paper investigates whether the Targeting the Ultra Poor program can lift households out of poverty in a fragile context: Afghanistan. In 80 villages in Balkh province, 1,219 of the poorest households were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Women in treatment households received a one-off "big-push" package, including a transfer of livestock assets, cash consumption stipend, skills training, and coaching. One year after the program ended -- two years after assets were transferred -- significant and large impacts are found across all the primary pre-specified outcomes: consumption, assets, psychological well-being, total time spent working, financial inclusion, and women's empowerment. Per capita consumption increases by 30 percent (USD 24 purchasing power parity, USD 7 nominal per month) with respect to the control group, and the share of households below the national poverty line decreases from 82 percent in the control group to 62 percent in the treatment group. Using modest assumptions about consumption impacts, the intervention has an estimated internal rate of return of 26 percent, excluding non-monetized improvements in psychological well-being, women's empowerment, and children's health and education. These findings suggest that "big-push" interventions can dramatically reduce poverty in fragile and conflict-affected regions.
Promoting E-Commerce in Georgia: Exploring Constraints to Online Participation using Baseline Data from an Experimental Study
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07-24) Apedo-Amah, Marie Christine; Coville, Aidan; Piza, Caio; Raja, Siddhartha; Scarpari, Raquel
E-commerce has the potential to expand market opportunities for businesses. However, it is not guaranteed. The World Development Report on Digital Dividends (World Bank 2016) highlights the importance of complementary analog support that may be needed to ensure people and businesses are able to fully benefit from the opportunities that high-speed, ubiquitous internet can provide. The first step in providing such support is understanding the constraints to adoption. The Competitive Policy Evaluation Lab (ComPEL) is supporting an impact evaluation in Georgia to generate knowledge about the constraints that prevent firms from participating in e-commerce platforms, while also testing an innovative approach to address the identified issues. The study evaluates the ‘Broadband for Development’ (BfD) project, a component of the World Bank-supported Georgia National Innovation Ecosystem (GeNIE) program, that aims to foster innovation, particularly for otherwise marginalized firms. The BfD provides support to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) located outside of the capital, Tblisi, to adopt broadband connections and establish an online retail presence through e-commerce training. Before BfD launched this effort, the research team collected and analyzed baseline data regarding 2,180 eligible firms. The purpose of this note is to explore the baseline results and some implications for BfD, or similar projects supported by the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation (FCI) Global Practice, within the context of the impact evaluation.
Paying Attention to Technology Innovations: Experimental Evidence from Renewable Energy Markets in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05-15) Coville, Aidan; Orozco, Victor; Reichert, Arndt
This paper presents results from a randomized field experiment that examined the effects of mass media campaigns informing about a new technology on the adoption decisions of households in rural Senegal. While some communities were exposed to a campaign broadcasted on national radio that informed households about the general benefits and quality of solar lamps, other communities were exposed to the same radio campaign complemented with information that singled out the most suitable lamp type for all main technological applications. The authors exploit the difference between the two campaigns to examine the extent to which certain information characteristics matter for the uptake of the technological innovation. Results from our experiment show that information on optimal lamp types was required to increase adoption of solar lamps on the extensive margin (more people investing in lamps). However, the type-unspecific information increased adoption on the intensive margin (existing users investing in more lamps). These findings can be explained by a simple learning model of selective attention that the authors adjusted to the study setting, where households engage in home production and spend time as well as mental energy to learn about technological features that maximize returns.
Paying Attention to Profitable Investments: Experimental Evidence from Renewable Energy Markets
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09) Coville, Aidan; Orozco-Olvera, Victor; Reichert, Arndt
This paper provides an explanation for why many information campaigns fail to affect decision-making. The authors experimentally show that a large information intervention about a profitable and climate-friendly household investment had limited effects if it only provided generic data. In contrast, it caused households to make new investments when it followed a campaign strategy designed to minimize information processing costs. This finding is consistent with a model of selective attention, where individuals prioritize information believed to be valuable after accounting for the costs of attending to the data that arise due to limited mental energy and time. The paper studies a range of possible mechanisms and finds corroborative evidence of selective attention as an inhibitor to learning.
The Nollywood Nudge: An Entertaining Approach to Saving
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Coville, Aidan; Di Maro, Vincenzo; Dunsch, Felipe Alexander; Zottel, Siegfried
This paper investigates the immediate and medium-term behavioral response to an emotional trigger designed to affect biases in intertemporal financial decisions. The emotional trigger is provided by a narrative portraying the catastrophic consequences of poor financial choices. Even when people are fully aware of the most appropriate action to take, cognitive biases may prevent this knowledge from translating into action. The paper contributes to the literature by directly testing the importance of linking emotional stimulus to financial messages, to influence borrowing and saving decisions, and identifying the interaction between emotional stimulus and the opportunity to act on this stimulus. The study randomly assigned individuals to a featured production -- a Nollywood (the Nigerian Hollywood) movie -- on the financial consequences of poor borrowing and saving behavior. This treatment is interacted with the option of opening a savings account at the screening of the movie. At the exit of the screening, individuals in the financial education movie treatment are more likely to open a savings account than individuals in the placebo movie treatment. However, the effects dissipate quickly. When savings and borrowing behavior is measured four months later, the study finds no differences between treatments. The paper concludes that emotional triggers delivered in the context of a one-time feature film might not be enough to secure sustained changes in behavior.