Many production managers have de-stocked excessively large inventories, gone lean, experimented with continuous improvement processes and introduced new working practices. These interventions have largely failed. Businesses have also failed to invest in the workforce that undertakes...

Increased and more effective public and private investments in the agricultural sector are needed to address the challenge of ending hunger and achieving food security by 2030. This paper analyses the potential of results-based approaches – an innovative financing instrument that links...

Die internationale Gemeinschaft hat in den vergangenen zehn Jahren eine umfassende, als Aid Effectiveness Agenda bezeichnete Reform der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (EZ) vereinbart, die Prinzipien und Verfahren für ein möglichst wirksames entwicklungspolitisches Handeln festlegt. Es wurde...

Development assistance has for many decades been aiming to support developing countries’ strategies to achieve more sustainable development. Yet, evidence shows that the impact of such assistance has been well below expectations. This study examines the efforts of assistance providers and...

In results-based approaches, funding is linked to pre-agreed results that are defined in the form of indicators. Disbursements only take place once progress in the indicators has been verified. This places high requirements on the quality of indicators used. Different development actors have...

Ongoing experiments with results-based aid (RBA), a development cooperation modality that disburses grants or loans in response to the achievement of pre-defined results, constitute an important and influential trend in international development cooperation. This discussion paper seeks to...

In this paper, I look at the effects of the infrastructure created under India’s public works programme – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) – on employment outcomes. In order to attribute observed outcomes to infrastructure creation, I address all potential causal...

Public works (PW) programmes are long-standing development interventions that have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their potential ‘double dividend’ of reducing poverty and fostering growth by transferring income directly to the poor, while at the same time building and...