The Labour government's new White Paper promises great changes in the British aid programme: re-focusing aid on poverty reduction, partnerships replacing one-sided conditionalities, and policy coherence so that the broad gamut of British policies in areas as diverse as agriculture, trade and...

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Assessing Aid argues that aid should be reallocated in favour of poor countries with good policies. This argument is based on a model in which poverty depends on growth, and growth on aid, the impact of aid being higher in countries with good policies. So-called 'poverty-efficient' aid...

This paper, based on a recent OED review of World Bank social fund projects, presents findings relating to two aspects of social fund performance that have been relatively under-researched in the social funds literature-the sustainability of benefits and the institutional development impacts. On...

Randomised control trials (RCTs) analyse what difference a programme makes through comparing those in the programme to a control group who do not receive it. Random assignment to the project and control groups overcomes selection bias which will otherwise occur from programme placement or...

We provide a ‘how to’ guide to undertake systematic reviews of effects in international development, by which we mean, synthesis of literature relating to the effectiveness of particular development interventions. Our remit includes determining the review's questions and scope, literature...

Systematic reviews are currently in high demand in international development. At least 100 new reviews are ongoing or already completed on a range of topics across the board in international development, many of which were commissioned by policy-making agencies. These new reviews need to be...