Part of the “Agriculture for Development – Revisited” workshop
This discussion on increasing the rigor of ex-post impact assessment focused on the step from research outputs to outcomes, and specifically on the estimates of the effect size associated with adoption of technologies. The motivation for this discussion also partly stemmed from the desire to expand the comprehensiveness and methodological options in the latter step that traces outcomes to impacts.
With the increased call for measuring and evaluating impacts that give a broader, accurate, rigorous and multi-dimensional perspective on how investments in research are contributing towards developmental goals, there is a need for alternative methods, new concepts and meaningful measurements of the ‘project worth.’ The goals, methods and measures used in traditional epIAs need to make room for methods and approaches that are better able to address a more direct evaluation question—what are the effects on poverty, hunger and resource degradation as a result of the adoption of research outputs generated by agricultural research for development?
The discussion was based on this draft of a paper by Alain de Janvry, Andrew Dustan and Elisabeth Sadoulet, comissioned by SPIA.
Discussion highlights (PDF)
External link: Workshop website
