Market-based reforms have been promoted over the past decades to improve the performance of the power sector. This systematic review assesses the effect of market-based reforms in developing countries on intermediate outcomes like technical efficiency and the resulting impacts on electricity...

Identifying the determinants of entrepreneurship is an important research and policy goal, especially in emerging market economies where lack of capital and supporting infrastructure often impose stringent constraints on business growth. This paper studies the impact of a comprehensive business...

This article evaluates whether cost-sharing public interventions are successful in promoting agricultural technology uptake by small and medium farmers, and whether these changes can affect yields. Our article contributes to the debate by providing empirical evidence, which is scarce in the...

Development impact calls for knowledgeable development practitioners. How then do the operational staff of the largest development agency value and use its own research? Is there an incentive to learn and does it translate into useful knowledge? A new survey reveals that the bulk of the World...

Income growth in rural areas is a considerable challenge to further poverty reduction and economic development. Using a survey of rural Bhutanese households, we investigate the impacts of a vocational skills training programme that was intended to diversify incomes outside agriculture. We find...

This paper estimates the effect of school-based management on student performance in the Philippines using the administrative dataset of all public schools in 23 school districts over a three-year period, 2003–2005. The authors test whether schools that received early school-based management...

There is growing evidence that HIV behaviour change interventions can increase knowledge but have little effect on behaviour. We revisit this conclusion by evaluating a popular educational tool for teaching young people about HIV – the ‘Join-In Circuit on AIDS, Love, and Sexuality’. The...

When is the rigorous impact evaluation of development projects a luxury, and when a necessity? The authors study one high-profile case: the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an experimental and intensive package intervention to spark sustained local economic development in rural Africa. They...

Despite the popularity and widespread implementation of school feeding programmes, evidence of their impact on school participation and nutritional status is mixed. In this study we evaluate feeding programmes in three districts of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Feeding modalities...

As more resources are being allocated to impact evaluation of development programmes, the need to map out the utilisation and influence of evaluations has been increasingly highlighted. This paper aims at filling this gap by describing and discussing experiences from four large impact...