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Scientific Field Research as a Test for the Effectiveness of Development Aid

Scientific Field Research as a Test for the Effectiveness of Development Aid

Ideas in development aid, including ideas to reduce hidden hunger, should be evaluated before their realization through a “practice-crash test” and should only be implemented in the long-term if the test showed satisfying results.

A possibility to test the effectiveness of development aid is through scientific field research, which is been done for ten years by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) under the direction of Esther Duflo.

As usual in randomized controlled clinical trials, the group of recipients of development aid is also randomly divided into “idea-implementers” and “non-idea-implementer”. The real benefit of the evaluated idea can then be tested in a specific time frame through the  comparison between implementers and non-implementers. Thereby it is also possible to identify factors which contribute to a successful realization or which may not.

Through this approach J-PAL was for example able to prove, that the allocation of micro-credits showed to be ineffective in practice and actually rather creates dependencies than eliminating them.

Read more (unfortunately following sources are only avalaible in German):

  • „Wir können die Armut besiegen“ Esther Duflos Rede über Forschung, Politik und Fortschritt. WZB Mitteilungen, Heft 150, Dezember 2015, S. 54-57. Schnellzugang über https://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/publikationen/wzb_mitteilungen/s54duflo.pdf
  • Forschung für die Armen – in kleinen Schritten Esther Duflo untersucht mit Feldexperimenten, welche Entwicklungsprojekte funktionieren und welche nicht.  F.A.Z. vom 02.05.2016

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