By Maria Amelia Gibbons* and Xia Li** An impact evaluation should be considered an “operation within an operation” and requires adequate funding, appropriate staff, and sufficient technical support. You will likely need to identify and contract service providers. It is very important in terms of cost- and time-efficiency to have carefully established the roles and … [Read more...] about Planning ahead: Key to a successful impact evaluation
Evaluation methods and techniques
What you need to design an impact evaluation
Designing an impact evaluation that is rigorous, feasible and relevant can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Political, technical, and operational criteria that at first might seem incompatible must be reconciled and made to work in unison. The good news is that there is often a way around these seemingly competing criteria, and a growing number of high-quality impact … [Read more...] about What you need to design an impact evaluation
Your New Gateway to Impact Evaluation
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Impact Evaluation Hub, a “one stop shop” for everything you need (well, almost) for an impact evaluation (IE). The hub provides links to many excellent resources on the web, as well as an array of documents unique to the portal available in English and Spanish for users to download … [Read more...] about Your New Gateway to Impact Evaluation
Credit or no credit? Is that really the question?
Is access to credit enough to improve welfare indicators at the firm or farm level? In recent years, a great deal of hope to promote development has been placed on the potential transformative power of financial access (World Bank 2007; Karlan and Morduch 2010). At the firm or farm level, having access to credit can facilitate the purchase of necessary inputs in a timely … [Read more...] about Credit or no credit? Is that really the question?
Errors: the simpler the better?
By: David Alfaro Serrano* Proper estimation of the standard errors of the estimators of regression coefficients is important. These estimates are needed when analyzing statistical significance, which is the basis of the interpretation of the results of an econometric analysis. In impact evaluation practice, analysis of statistical significance is what allows the researcher … [Read more...] about Errors: the simpler the better?