IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/edddbu/edd_274_0193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

L'(absence d') impact de l'impact : pourquoi les évaluations d'impact conduisent rarement à une prise de décision politique fondée sur les faits

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Louis Arcand

Abstract

A recurring puzzle to many academics and some policymakers is why impact evaluations, which have become something of a cottage industry in the development field, have so little impact on actual policymaking. In this paper, I study the impact of impact evaluations. I show, in a simple Bayesian framework embedded within a standard contest success function-based model of competition amongst anti-evaluation policymakers, Bayesian policymakers, and frequentist evaluators, that the likelihood of a program being cancelled is a decreasing function both of the impact estimated by the evaluation and of the prior on whose basis the program was approved to begin with. Moreover, the probability of cancellation is a decreasing function of the effectiveness of the influence exerted by frequentist evaluators. Since the latter?s effectiveness in terms of lobbying in favor of their findings in the real world is likely to be close to zero, the likelihood of cancelling a program that was approved in the first place, despite its suffering a highly negative evaluation, is extremely low. The model thus provides one possible explanation for why impact evaluations have so little impact in the realm of decision-making, and why they have contributed so little to evidence-based policymaking.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Louis Arcand, 2013. "L'(absence d') impact de l'impact : pourquoi les évaluations d'impact conduisent rarement à une prise de décision politique fondée sur les faits," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 21(4), pages 193-218.
  • Handle: RePEc:cai:edddbu:edd_274_0193
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=EDD_274_0193
    Download Restriction: free

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-du-developpement-2013-4-page-193.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geweke, John, 2001. "A note on some limitations of CRRA utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 341-345, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bidarkota, Prasad V. & Dupoyet, Brice V. & McCulloch, J. Huston, 2009. "Asset pricing with incomplete information and fat tails," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1314-1331, June.
    2. Jean-Louis Arcand, 2014. "The (Lack of) Impact of Impact: Why Impact Evaluations Seldom Lead to Evidence-based Policymaking," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 22(HS01), pages 289-311.
    3. Ammann, Manuel & Coqueret, Guillaume & Schade, Jan-Philip, 2016. "Characteristics-based portfolio choice with leverage constraints," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 23-37.
    4. Adam, Klaus & Marcet, Albert, 2011. "Internal rationality, imperfect market knowledge and asset prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1224-1252, May.
    5. Assa, Hirbod & Zimper, Alexander, 2018. "Preferences over all random variables: Incompatibility of convexity and continuity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 71-83.
    6. Ikefuji, Masako & Laeven, Roger J.A. & Magnus, Jan R. & Muris, Chris, 2020. "Expected utility and catastrophic risk in a stochastic economy–climate model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 214(1), pages 110-129.
    7. Yiqun Mou & Lars A. Lochstoer & Michael Johannes, 2011. "Learning about Consumption Dynamics," 2011 Meeting Papers 306, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Yoon, Gawon, 2004. "On the existence of expected utility with CRRA under STUR," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 219-224, May.
    9. Bakshi, Gurdip & Skoulakis, Georgios, 2010. "Do subjective expectations explain asset pricing puzzles?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 462-477, December.
    10. Penaranda, Francisco, 2007. "Portfolio choice beyond the traditional approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24481, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Augusto De La Torre & Alain Ize, 2010. "Regulatory Reform: Integrating Paradigms," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 109-139, March.
    12. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Fat tails and spurious estimation of consumption‐based asset pricing models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1156-1177, September.
    13. Antonio Gargano & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2019. "Bond Return Predictability: Economic Value and Links to the Macroeconomy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 508-540, February.
    14. Shamsi Zamenjani, Azam, 2021. "Do financial variables help predict the conditional distribution of the market portfolio?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 327-345.
    15. Suen, Richard M. H., 2009. "Bounding the CRRA Utility Functions," MPRA Paper 13260, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. M. Mercè Claramunt & Maite Mármol & Xavier Varea, 2023. "Facing a Risk: To Insure or Not to Insure—An Analysis with the Constant Relative Risk Aversion Utility Function," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-13, February.
    17. Chen, Yu & Cosimano, Thomas F. & Himonas, Alex A., 2008. "Analytic solving of asset pricing models: The by force of habit case," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3631-3660, November.
    18. Antony Millner, 2013. "On Welfare Frameworks and Catastrophic Climate Risks," CESifo Working Paper Series 4442, CESifo.
    19. Kame Babilla, Thierry, 2014. "Food Price Volatility implications for Trade and Monetary Policy between Nigeria and CEMAC: a Bayesian DSGE model approach," Conference papers 332525, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    20. Hashem Pesaran & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2007. "Learning, Structural Instability, and Present Value Calculations," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 253-288.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    impact evaluation; Bayesian analysis; contest success functions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:edddbu:edd_274_0193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceauvfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.