Person:
Premand, Patrick

Development Impact Evaluation Group, the World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Social protection, Safety nets, Employment, Skills, Early childhood development, Impact evaluation, Development economics

ORCID

0000-0002-7447-5995

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RePEc
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Development Impact Evaluation Group, the World Bank

Last updated: June 28, 2024

Biography

Patrick Premand is a Senior Economist in the Development Impact Evaluation Group (DIME) in the research Vice-Presidency at the World Bank. He works on Social Protection and Safety Nets; Jobs, Economic Inclusion and Entrepreneurship; and Early Childhood Development. He conducts impact evaluations and policy experiments of social protection, jobs and human development programs. He often works on government-led interventions implemented at scale, in close collaboration with policymakers and researchers. He has led policy dialogue and technical assistance activities, as well as worked on the design, implementation and management of a range of World Bank operations. He previously held various positions at the World Bank, including in the Social Protection & Jobs group in Africa, the Human Development Economics Unit of the Africa region, the Office of the Chief Economist for Human Development, and the Poverty Unit of the Latin America and Caribbean region. He holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 15

Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition
(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, 2016-09-13) Gertler, Paul J.; Martinez, Sebastian; Premand, Patrick; Rawlings, Laura B.; Vermeersch, Christel M. J.
The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.
Do Cash Transfers Foster Resilience? Evidence from Rural Niger
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11) Stoeffler, Quentin; Premand, Patrick
Policy makers are increasingly interested in strategies to promote resilience and mitigate the effects of future climatic shocks. Cash transfer programs have had widely documented positive welfare impacts. They often also aim to offer protection against shocks, but their role in fostering resilience has been less studied. This paper assesses whether the beneficiaries of a multiyear government cash transfer program in rural Niger are better able to mitigate the welfare effects of drought shocks. It analyzes mechanisms through which cash transfers contribute to resilience, such as savings facilitation, asset accumulation, or income smoothing in agriculture and off-farm activities. It combines household survey data collected as part of a randomized control trial with satellite data used to identify exogenous rainfall shocks. The results show that cash transfers increase household consumption by about 10 percent on average. Importantly, this increase is mostly concentrated among households affected by drought shocks, for whom welfare impacts are larger than transfer amounts. Cash transfers increase savings. They also help households protect earnings in agriculture and off-farm businesses when shocks occur. Few differences in household durables or livestock are observed. Overall, these findings suggest that cash transfer programs targeting poor households can foster resilience by facilitating savings and income smoothing.
Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development: Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08) Barry, Oumar; Premand, Patrick
Signs of development delays and malnutrition are widespread among young children in low-income settings. Social protection programs such as cash transfers are increasingly combined with behavioral change promotion or parenting interventions to improve early childhood development. This paper disentangles the effects of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor households through an experiment embedded in a government program in Niger. The study is also designed to identify within-community spillovers from the behavioral change intervention. The findings show that behavioral change promotion affects a range of practices related to nutrition, health, stimulation, and child protection. Local spillovers on parenting practices are also found. Moderate gains in children's socio-emotional development are observed, but there are no improvements in anthropometrics or cognitive development. Cash transfers alone do not alter parenting practices or improve early childhood development. Cash transfers improve welfare and food security at the household level, and the behavioral intervention induces intra-household reallocations toward children.
Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment among University Graduates
(Elsevier, 2016-01) Premand, Patrick; Almeida, Rita; Barouni, Mahdi
Entrepreneurship education has the potential to enable youth to gain skills and create their own jobs. In Tunisia, a curricular reform created an entrepreneurship track providing business training and coaching to help university students prepare a business plan. We rely on randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track to identify impacts on students’ labor market outcomes one year after graduation. The entrepreneurship track led to a small increase in self-employment, but overall employment rates remained unchanged. Although business skills improved, effects on personality and entrepreneurial traits were mixed. The program nevertheless increased graduates’ aspirations toward the future.
Cote d'Ivoire Jobs Diagnostic: Employment, Productivity, and Inclusion for Poverty Reduction
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017) Christiaensen, Luc; Premand, Patrick; Christiaensen, Luc; Premand, Patrick
After a decade of crisis and stellar economic growth over the past five years, Côte d’Ivoire has now set its sight on becoming an emerging economy. Improving prospects for productive employment will be essential for socially sustainable growth and poverty reduction. The "Cote d'Ivoire Jobs Diagnostic: Employment, Productivity, and Inclusion for Poverty Reduction" report provides a comprehensive and multi-sectoral empirical analysis of employment challenges and opportunities to inform strategies and policy actions in Côte d’Ivoire. The report aims to expand policy discussions on employment from a focus on the number of jobs and unemployment to a broader attention on the quality, productivity and inclusiveness of jobs. It makes the case for a jobs strategy with a sharper poverty lens that would focus on raising labor productivity in agriculture and informal off-farm employment to foster structural transformation, while, in parallel, pursuing longer-term goals of expanding the thin formal sector.
Poor Households' Productive Investments of Cash Transfers: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Niger
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-09) Stoeffler, Quentin; Mills, Bradford; Premand, Patrick
Cash transfer programs have spread rapidly as an instrument to raise household consumption and reduce poverty. Questions remain about the sustainability of cash transfer impacts in low-income settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular, on whether cash transfers can foster productive investments in addition to raising immediate consumption among the very poor. This paper presents evidence that a cash transfer project in rural Niger induced investments in assets and productive activities that were sustained among the very poor 18 months after project completion. Results show lasting increases in livestock assets and participation in saving groups (tontines). Cash transfers also contributed to improved agricultural productivity, but no effects in terms of diversification of other household enterprises are found. Productive asset gains are, notably, largest among the poorest of the poor, suggesting that small regular cash transfers combined with enhanced saving mechanisms can relax constraints to asset accumulation among the extreme poor.
Constraints to Productive Employment Faced by Safety Nets Beneficiaries in the Sahel: Results of a Multi-Country Qualitative Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Bossuroy, Thomas; Koussoube, Estelle; Premand, Patrick
In the Sahel subregion, which extends over Central and Western Africa, low labor productivity poses a challenge to poverty reduction, economic growth, and social stability. Social Safety Net Projects target the poorest households who derive their livelihoods from low-productivity activities. As such, they have the potential to improve labor productivity. As part of the Sahel adaptive social protection program (ASPP), the World Bank supports the design and implementation of productive accompanying measures for safety nets beneficiaries. This report sets out the results of a qualitative assessment of the constraints to productive employment that was conducted in the Social Safety Net Project areas, across five of the six countries covered by the ASPP: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad. This assessment identified the main challenges to productivity growth in farm and nonfarm sectors and, jointly with other surveys and local and regional consultations, helped define accompanying measures to safety nets programs aimed at increasing current employment productivity and generating more productive jobs.
Contemporaneous and Post-Program Impacts of a Public Works Program: Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-05-23) Bertrand, Marianne; Crépon, Bruno; Marguerie, Alicia; Premand, Patrick
Public works are one of the most popular safety net and employment policy instruments in thedeveloping world, despite limited evidence on their effectiveness and optimal design features.This paper presents results on contemporaneous and post-program impacts from a public worksintervention in Côte d'Ivoire. The program provided 7 months of temporary employment inroad maintenance to urban youths. Participants self-selected to apply for the public works jobs,which paid the formal minimum wage and were randomized among applicants. Randomizedsub-sets of beneficiaries also received complementary training on basic entrepreneurship or jobsearch skills. During the program, results show limited contemporaneous impacts of publicworks on the level of employment, but a shift in the composition of employment towards thebetter-paid public works wage jobs. A year after the end of the program, there are no lastingimpacts on the level or composition of employment, although positive impacts are observed onearnings through higher productivity in non-agricultural self-employment. Large heterogeneityin impacts are found, particularly during the program. Results from machine learningtechniques suggest potential trade-offs between maximizing contemporaneous and postprogramimpacts. Traditional heterogeneity analysis shows that a range of practical targetingmechanisms perform as well as the machine learning benchmark, leading to strongercontemporaneous and post-program benefits without sharp trade-offs. Overall, departing fromself-targeting based on the formal minimum wage would lead to strong improvements inprogram cost-effectiveness.
The Medium-Term Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on Labor Market Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from University Graduates in Tunisia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01) Alaref, Jumana; Brodmann, Stefanie; Premand, Patrick
Despite the widespread popularity of entrepreneurship education, there is thin evidence on its effectiveness in improving employment outcomes over the medium to long term. A potential time lag between entrepreneurial intentions and actions is sometimes presented as a reason why employment impacts are rarely observed. Based on a randomized control trial among university students in Tunisia, this paper studies the medium-term impacts of entrepreneurship education four years after students' graduation. The paper complements earlier evidence that documented small, short-term impacts on entry into self-employment and aspirations toward the future one year after graduation. The medium-term results show that the impacts of entrepreneurship education were short-lived. There are no sustained impacts on self-employment or employment outcomes four years after graduation. There are no lasting effects on latent entrepreneurship either, and the short-term increase in optimism also receded.
Social Accountability and Service Delivery: Experimental Evidence from Uganda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05) Fiala, Nathan; Premand, Patrick
Corruption and mismanagement of public resources can affect the quality of government services and undermine growth. Can citizens in poor communities be empowered to demand better-quality public investments? This paper looks at whether providing social accountability training and information on project performance can lead to improvements in local development projects. It finds that offering communities a combination of training and information on project quality leads to significant improvements in household welfare. However, providing either social accountability training or project quality information by itself has no welfare effect. These results are concentrated in areas that are reported by local officials as more corrupt or mismanaged. The impacts appear to come from community members increasing their monitoring of local projects, making more complaints to local and central officials, and cooperating more. The paper also finds modest improvements in people's trust in the central government. The study is unique in its size and integration in a national program. The results suggest that government-led, large-scale social accountability programs can strengthen communities' ability to improve service delivery.