Don’t Disseminate, Co-Create

CEGA Reflects on a Successful EDI Policy Institute

Andrew Westbury is CEGA’s Senior Manager for Agriculture and Institutions.

In 2015, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) launched a comprehensive research initiative with an ambitious goal: to fill critical evidence gaps regarding the role of public institutions in catalyzing economic growth and development. Economic Development & Institutions (EDI), led by Oxford Policy Management, the Paris School of Economics, the University of Namur, and Aide de la Decision Economique, was designed to generate insights on how best to increase the responsiveness of state institutions. Previously, motivated public servants and their civil society partners were left with little guidance on how different reforms might get better results.

Implementing partners from EDI’s portfolio of randomized evaluations at UC-Berkeley for “Sharing Strategies, Sharing Solutions: A Policy Institute for Innovations in Public Services”

The EDI consortium enlisted CEGA to lead a core component of the program: building a portfolio of randomized controlled trials to test a series of high-profile policy reforms in real-world institutions. Through a successful matchmaking workshop and two competitive funding rounds, we identified 80 researchers and 35 different implementing agencies to run 30 field experiments in 12 different countries around the world.

In late August, we convened the EDI community at UC-Berkeley for “Sharing Solutions, Sharing Strategies: A Policy Institute for Innovations in Public Services.” Participants were able to hear about work being carried out across the consortium, and identify important synergies. Researchers also gained valuable feedback on work-in-progress. Faculty leads Ernesto Dal Bó and Frederico Finan, who also serve as Scientific Directors for Political Economy at CEGA, facilitated a two-day peer-learning workshop for 13 implementing partners collaborating on EDI evaluations.

Of the important issues that were brought to the table, a few stood out:

CEGA Faculty Co-Chair for Political Economy Frederico Finan presents his work on state capacities.

Big questions abound: Our event was a fresh reminder that critical research gaps stunt the ability of public servants and civil society groups to affect positive change. Bilal Siddiqi, economist in the Development Research Group of World Bank and leader of the excellent Data and Evidence for Justice Reform, delivered a powerful presentation (State of Science: The Judiciary) on what is known about the inner workings of courts and justice systems. Sadly, inefficiencies, delays, and pernicious levels of bias are well documented in the literature while the troves of court data that could be used to address these problems frequently go unused.

Finan and Dal Bó presented their work (The State of Science: Institutions, State Capabilities, and Development) on how public institutions can effectively recruit personnel and monitor employees, drawing on groundbreaking work in Mexico and Paraguay. Their work explores whether financial rewards are really the best way to incentivize a life in public service, and who is best placed within the bureaucracy to monitor those most in need of oversight. Answering these questions is a first order priority if even the most basic public services are to be met.

Camilo Arango Osorno, founder and CEO of Estrategia & Territorio in Colombia, provides his perspectives on research partnerships for policy evaluations.

Solutions are out there: While open research questions loomed large, EDI researchers are working diligently to generate solutions. Fourteen EDI researchers presented their work at the event, sharing insights on taxation, legal protections, public service provision, and other topics.

The key value proposition of EDI is the learning the program will generate across its portfolio, which is more valuable than the sum of its parts. All studies respond directly to a set of 40 open research questions identified at the onset of the program after an extensive review of over 200 impact evaluations. Linking studies around this framework ensures that EDI research is not only frontier, but generalizable.

Moreover, EDI strives to answer immediate policy questions in addition to responding to global research priorities. The matchmaking workshop we hosted early in the program allowed researchers and implementing partners to “co-create” evaluations that meet local needs while contributing to wider debates. The selection process for EDI funding prioritized projects with a strong local implementing partner — most often a government counterpart. The event gave researchers a platform for sharing early insights in order to meet time-sensitive policy demands.

CEGA Faculty Director Edward Miguel presents his research collaboration with Kenya Power and the Kenya Minister of Energy and Petroleum.

Progress is good, but there is more we can do: At CEGA, we are proud to be a part of a community of research organizations that regularly provides rigorous evidence to policymakers across the developing world. Yet significant obstacles to evidence-based policymaking remain. When asked how we can better meet their needs, our implementing partners said this:

• Keep co-creating: “Co-creation” need not be limited to the design phase of a new evaluation. Policy perspectives can meaningfully inform our research program at all stages of the pipeline. For example, we learned that policy briefs are most useful when they present step-by-step procedural information with specific timelines and budget considerations for the reforms being evaluated. This is a great insight and, to our knowledge, not common practice. At EDI, we are now actively considering how perspectives from implementing partners can be more actively integrated within the full spectrum activities we have planned.

Economist Bilal Siddiqi discusses his research on courts and legal systems at UC-Berkeley during EDI event.

• No time to waste: Our implementing partners make numerous decisions everyday and regularly need information on a diversity of issues. The final results of the evaluations EDI is supporting will only partially meet their information needs. While we are not in a position to provide consulting services, we believe we can leverage evaluations across the EDI portfolio to answer questions that come up along the way. Rather than waiting for the full results of our evaluations, we are exploring ways to directly support our partners now.
• Build local research capacity: Working with EDI provides our partners access to some of the world’s leading research institutions social scientists in their fields. At the same time, they broadly called for better integration of researchers from universities, institutes and think tanks in their home countries into rigorous policy evaluations. CEGA has a long history of building such partnerships in Latin America, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Moving forward, we hope to better align CEGA’s capacity building efforts with the EDI initiative.

CEGA faculty chairs Frederico Finan, Ernesto Dal Bo, and World Bank economist Bilal Siddiqi hear directly from policymakers collaborating on rigorous evaluations on institutional reforms.

As we continue to assess how these and other insights from our event might shape our work, we also want to thank all those that participated in the convening. In particular, major appreciation to our organizing team Leah Bridle, Ben Klooss, Harriett Butlin, Elisa Cascardi. We thank Ernesto Dal Bó, Frederico Finan, and Edward Miguel for their guidance and support. We also greatly appreciate the wonderful contributions of our DFID advisor Liz Brower, David Sasaki of the Hewlett Foundation, Bilal Siddiqi of the World Bank, CEGA affiliates Kate Casey and Michael Callen, and friends from the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) program, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI), and our hosts the Haas School of Business.