In recent years debates on as well as funding of impact evaluations of development interventions have flourished. Unfortunately, controversy regarding the promotion and application of randomized experiments (RE) has led to a sense of polarization in the development policy and evaluation...

Impact studies at the level of the beneficiary are not very common in the case of small-scale development projects. In this paper we will present the case of an evaluation study on a training project in Low External Input Agriculture in Guatemala. The evaluation design is based on a simple...

At a time when technological innovations are making our world increasingly smaller and our production systems are becoming increasingly more efficient, the benefits of economic growth and development as a whole have not been able to reach all of society. Indeed, many poor countries,...

In mid term program evaluations evaluators are often confronted with the double task of retrospectively judging the program's merit and worth while at the same time advising decision makers concerning future adjustments in courses of action. In such cases, it can be argued that it is...

In this paper, we explore some of the methodological challenges that evaluators face in assessing the impacts of complex intervention strategies. We illustrate these challenges, using the specific example of an impact evaluation of one of the six focal areas of the Global Environment Facility;...

Looks at the necessary conditions in the optimization of donor operations for debt relief, notably additional resource generation and desirability of earmarking. Presents a tentative overview of the role of microfinance in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSPR) policies of 29 countries in...

This paper discusses to what extent debt relief embedded in debt swaps linked to development can be helpful in reaching development goals such as the Millennium Development Goals. A range of historical and current international debt relief practices and proposals is assessed on the basis of...