The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) assess the conduciveness of a country's policy and institutional framework to poverty reduction, sustainable growth, and the effective use of development assistance. The CPIA enters the calculation of country performance ratings...

This paper analyses to what extent the aid and development effectiveness agenda has been applied in the area of capacity development support, with a specific focus on the use of developing country systems. The paper is based on a literature review and a limited number of semi-structured...

Standard methods of impact evaluation often leave significant gaps between what we know about development effectiveness and what we want to know-gaps that stem from distortions in the market for knowledge. The author discusses how evaluations might better address these knowledge gaps and so be...

This paper examines the correlates of success of development policy lending operations of the World Bank between 2004 and 2012. The paper uses a data set constructed of individual loan characteristics and ex-post loan ratings produced by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group. Departing...

Knowledge about development effectiveness is constrained by two factors. First, the project staff in governments and international agencies who decide how much to invest in research on specific interventions are often not well informed about the returns to rigorous evaluation and (even when they...