Modelling is an approach to impact evaluation which uses mathematical models to describe social and economic relationships and to infer causality from an intervention to an outcome, and/or between an outcome and its determinants. Models with more than one equation are most valuable, as they...

Quasi-experimental research designs, like experimental designs, test causal hypotheses. Quasi-experimental designs identify a comparison group that is as similar as possible to the intervention group in terms of baseline (pre-intervention) characteristics. The comparison group captures what...

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is an experimental form of impact evaluation in which the population receiving the programme or policy intervention is chosen at random from the eligible population, and a control group is also chosen at random from the same eligible population. It tests the...

Social funds have been one of the main manifestations of the World Bank's move toward promoting projects with a participatory orientation. Supporters of social funds argue that participation in social fund activities builds community social capital. Critics of the Bank's use of social capital...

Is development best achieved by going for growth, or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare? In contrast to the Human Development Reports of the UNDP, the World Bank has stressed the growth approach. Recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that...

Why do people participate in community projects? Game theory approaches based on the prisoners' dilemma suggest that people will not participate even if they would have been better off had they all done so. This paper adapts an argument of Bates to show how a system of enforceable fines can...

The Community-Based Nutrition Component of the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project sought to improve nutritional status through nutritional counselling and supplementary feeding for malnourished children and pregnant women. This paper presents a theory-based impact evaluation of this...

No abstract

Poverty is now commonly recognised as a multi-dimensional concept, but there is less agreement about whether such recognition matters for poverty reduction policies in practice. This article argues that it does matter, as income is an input measure rather than a welfare outcome, the correlation...