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Year: 2012 Publisher: Washington, D.C., The World Bank,
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Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only those experiments with "interesting" results get published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. This paper describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delves into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in "last mile" issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects.
Access to Finance --- Banks & Banking Reform --- E-Business --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- ICT Policy and Strategies --- Impact Evaluation --- Learning from failure --- Matching grants --- Microfinance --- Private Sector Development --- Randomization bias
Book
Year: 2012 Publisher: Washington, D.C. : The World Bank,
Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark
Loading...Choose an application
- Reference Manager
- EndNote
- RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)
Nearly 60 percent of Uganda's population is aged below twenty. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), early pregnancy, and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and or vocational skills is however uncertain. A programme was conducted to provide: (i) vocational training to run small-scale enterprises; and (ii) information on health and risky behaviors. The programme conducted, positively impacts behaviors on both economic and health margins. On economic margins, the intervention raises the likelihood that girls engage in income generating activities by 32 percent mainly driven by increased participation in self-employment. On health related margins, self-reported routine condom usage increases by 50 percent among the sexually active, and the probability of having a child decreases by 26 percent. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops from 21 percent to almost zero. The findings suggest combined interventions might be more effective among adolescent girls than single-pronged interventions aiming to improve labor market outcomes solely through vocational training, or to change risky behaviors solely through education programmes.
Adolescent Health --- Adolescents --- Childbirth --- Curriculum --- Dependency Ratio --- Developing Countries --- Domestic Violence --- Education --- Education For All --- Enrollment Rates --- Family Planning --- Fertility --- Fertility Rates --- Gender --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Human Capital --- Infections --- Information Campaigns --- Labor Market --- Leadership --- Literacy --- Private Sector Development --- Reading --- Reproductive Health --- Returns to Education --- School Attendance --- Schools --- Sex Workers --- Sexual Behaviors --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises --- Social Norms --- Social Protections and Labor --- Social Unrest --- Unemployment --- Urban Areas --- Violence Against Women --- Vocational & Technical Education --- Youth
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