Can project evaluation methods be used to evaluate programs: complex interventions involving multiple activities? A program evaluation cannot be based simply on separate evaluations of its components if interactions between the activities are important. In this paper a measure is proposed, the...

Increasingly both donor agencies and recipient governments want to assess the effectiveness of aid. Unfortunately, existing methods for impact evaluation are designed for the evaluation of homogeneous interventions ('projects') where those with and without 'treatment' can be compared. However,...

Using a unique panel data set for rural households in Zimbabwe we estimate a microeconomic model of growth under uncertainty, a stochastic version of the Ramsey model with livestock as the single asset. We use the estimation results in simulation experiments (over a 20-year period) to quantify...

In this note we show that the standard, loglinear growth regression specification is consistent with one and only one model in the class of stochastic Ramsey models. This model is highly restrictive: it requires a Cobb-Douglas technology and a 100% depreciation rate and it implies that risk does...