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The New Transparency in Development Economics: Lessons from the Millennium Villages Controversy

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  • Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes

Abstract

The Millennium Villages Project is a high profile, multi-country development project that has aimed to serve as a model for ending rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The project became the subject of controversy when the methodological basis of early claims of success was questioned. The lively ensuing debate offers lessons on three recent mini-revolutions that have swept the field of development economics: the rising standards of evidence for measuring impact, the “open data” movement, and the growing role of the blogosphere in research debates. In this paper, Michael Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes discuss how a new transparency is changing the debate about what works.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Clemens, Gabriel Demombynes, 2013. "The New Transparency in Development Economics: Lessons from the Millennium Villages Controversy," Working Papers 342, Center for Global Development.
    • Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:342
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Michael A. Clemens & Gabriel Demombynes, 2011. "When does rigorous impact evaluation make a difference? The case of the Millennium Villages," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(3), pages 305-339, September.
    4. Declan Butler, 2012. "Poverty project opens to scrutiny," Nature, Nature, vol. 486(7402), pages 165-166, June.
    5. Demombynes, Gabriel & Trommlerova, Sofia Karina, 2012. "What has driven the decline of infant mortality in Kenya ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6057, The World Bank.
    6. Lant Pritchett & Salimah Samji & Jeffrey S. Hammer, 2012. "It's All about MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning ('e') to Crawl the Design Space," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Edoardo Masset & Arnab Acharya & Chris Barnett & Tony Dogbe, 2013. "An impact evaluation design for the Millennium Villages Project in Northern Ghana," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 137-157, June.
    8. Martin Ravallion, 2012. "Fighting Poverty One Experiment at a Time: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty : Review Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 103-114, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kimanthi, Hellen & Hebinck, Paul & Sato, Chizu, 2022. "Exploring gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective in food crop cultivation: A case of the Millennium Villages Project implementation site in western Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Millennium Villages Project; impact evaluation; transparency; open data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis

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