Nancy Birdsall What Would the Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation Aid Watch Development Research Ins

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Nancy BirdsallWhat Would the Poor Say Debates
in Aid EvaluationAid WatchDevelopment Research
Institute, New York UniversityFebruary 6, 2009
Cash on Delivery Aid
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Aid, institutions, and a proposal

• Functional system taxes for outcomes, with
  citizen scrutiny
• Aid dependent countries aid, limited outcomes,
  no citizen scrutiny
• Donor micromanagement aid for inputs, replaces
  citizen scrutiny
• Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid aid for outcomes,
  mechanisms for promoting citizen scrutiny

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The idea Cash on Delivery Aid

• Donor-recipient binding contract
• Donor guarantees specific additional payment for
  specific incremental progress, e.g. 200 per
  child completing primary school and taking an
  approved assessment exam
• Recipient reports on progress and agrees to
  independent third-party audit
• Contract is public information

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Essential features of COD Aid

• Pay for outcomes, not inputs
• Transparent to the public
• Hands-off
• Independently verified

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Contract for COD Aid applied to primary education

• Recipient government
• Implements competency test
• Tracks and publicly reports completion figures
  and test scores
• Donor
• Contracts independent agent from pre-agreed list
  to audit government report
• Makes payments upon good audit
• Payment directly to government budget

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Donor Role in Hands-On Approach
Traditional Project Aid
Identification DesignNegotiationApprovalSta
rtupImplementation Tech. Assist. M E Final
Evaluation Outcome Measurement?
Donor engaged in almost every phase

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Donor Role in Hands-Off Approach
Traditional Project Aid
Cash on Delivery Aid
Identification DesignNegotiationApprovalSta
rtupImplementation Tech. Assist. M E Final
Evaluation Outcome Measurement
Donor and recipient agree measure of progress
Donor engaged in almost every phase

Validation of outcomes by third party

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Countries can use fundsfor whatever they think
will work best
Photo Anna Lindh Euro Mediterranean Foundation
Photo U.S. Department of State
textbooks
teacher training
Photo Prefectura Municipal de Erechim
Conditional cash transfers
Photo Pierre Holtz, UNICEF
Photo Horizons Unlimited
early nutrition programs to boost learning
outcomes
improving roads so children can get to school
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Benefits for recipients

• Less intrusive local solutions
• Fully transparent to citizens and civil society
  (200 per child)
• Gets finance ministers focused on education
  outcomes

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Benefits for donors

• Eliminates complex conditionality
• Improves and simplifies monitoring
• Makes recipient government visibly accountable to
  communities, parents, citizens
• 200 per child easy to explain to donor
  legislature and taxpayers
• Implements Paris Declaration reforms

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Citizens role in making government accountable

• Government publishes contract
• Government could publish what inputs it buys
• Results available at local / school level,
  compared to other localities
• Results of testing published at some level

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Research Level 1
COD multiplies opportunities to discover what
works
Country Response
COD Aid
Politics Economics Institutions
Donor Response
Schooling Outcomes
Specific Programs Policies
Politics Economics Institutions
Other Factors
Foreign Aid Policies Practices
Research Level 2
Level 1 Counterfactual Traditional Aid / Compare
With other country or sector? Level 2
Counterfactual Traditional Schooling Project /
Compare across schools or districts?
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Learning from COD Aid level 1 process
evaluation

• Local institutions (think tanks/policy research)
  undertake process evaluations (press, civil
  society advocates)
• Do donors behave better? (coordination,
  ownership, etc. etc.)
• Do recipient governments behave better (i.e. more
  accountable to citizens)? Does transparency and
  feedback increase accountability?

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Research level 1

• Track COD Aid intervention to understand
• Donor(s) behavior e.g. changes number of
  missions and the nature of interaction
• Recipient behavior e.g. resource transfers more
  transparent patronage in teacher appts. Cut
  minister of education changed increased
  collaboration between ministries

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Research level 2 (Esther Dyson)

• maybe. . . .depends. . . .

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Happening in real world?

• Recipient governments prefer budget support (but
  Tanzania . . .)
• Donors fear waste and corruption if they dont
  track inputs (ignoring fungibility)
• Fundamental problem with all innovation first
  mover cannot capture all the benefits, and
• Donor bureacracies risk-averse all bureacracies