IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/diedps/312014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Boosting or hindering aid effectiveness? An assessment of systems for measuring agency results

Author

Listed:
  • Holzapfel, Sarah

Abstract

Amid rising criticism of aid effectiveness coupled with tight budgets in many donor countries at a time of economic crisis, donor agencies are under pressure to deliver value for money and to demonstrate development results. In response to these pressures, more and more donor agencies are adopting standard indicators, which allow for results to be aggregated across interventions and countries, in order to report agency-wide results. This paper analyses the reporting practices of ten bilateral and multilateral donor agencies and assesses the implications of agency-wide results measurement systems for aid effectiveness. The analysis shows that the data on aggregate results provided by donor agencies is only of limited informational value and does not provide an adequate basis for holding donor agencies to account. Moreover, reporting on agency-wide results may have a number of adverse effects. Given the various limitations and risks identified in this paper, I suggest that donor agencies should explore complementary options or alternatives to standard indicators in order to meet their reporting requirements. Donor agencies are advised to invest more in rigorous impact evaluations, to raise the transparency of individual interventions and to incorporate beneficiary feedback more systematically into their monitoring and evaluation efforts.

Suggested Citation

  • Holzapfel, Sarah, 2014. "Boosting or hindering aid effectiveness? An assessment of systems for measuring agency results," IDOS Discussion Papers 31/2014, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:312014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/199444/1/die-dp-2014-31.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janus, Heiner & Keijzer, Niels, 2015. "Big results now? Emerging lessons from results-based aid in Tanzania," IDOS Discussion Papers 4/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    2. Weinlich, Silke & Baumann, Max-Otto & Lundsgaarde, Erik & Wolff, Peter, 2020. "Earmarking in the multilateral development system: Many shades of grey," IDOS Studies, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), volume 101, number 101, March.
    3. Meijer, Karen, 2014. "Can supply chain initiatives reduce deforestation? A comparative analysis of cases from Brazil and Indonesia," IDOS Discussion Papers 36/2014, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wirksamkeit und Evaluierung;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:312014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ditubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.