The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.

Impact evaluation aims to answer whether and to what extent a development intervention has delivered its intended effects, thus enabling evidence-based policy making. The desire for more hard evidence of the effectiveness of development interventions has fueled a growing interest in rigorous impact evaluation in the international development community. This report discusses the fundamental challenge of impact evaluation, which is to credibly attribute the impact, if any, to the intervention concerned. It then discusses the merits and limitations of various impact evaluation methods. It also presents a survey of recent applications of impact evaluation, focusing on the typical evaluation problems looked at, methods used, and key findings. The report includes six case studies and outlines practical steps in implementing an impact evaluation.

The focus on results in development agencies has led to increased focus on impact evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness of development programmes. This book illustrates the broad range of methods available for counterfactual analysis of infrastructure programmes such as establishment, rehabilitation and maintenance of roads, water supply and electrical power plants and grids. Understanding the impact of interventions requires understanding of the context in which the intervention takes place and the channels through which it is expected to occur. For infrastructure interventions it is particularly important to identify the links between the input and the outcomes and impacts because the well-being of people, the ultimate impact, does not change directly as a consequence of the intervention. Therefore impact evaluation of infrastructure programmes typically requires mixing both quantitative and qualitative approaches as illustrated in many of the contribution to this edited volume. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Effectiveness.

This report describes evaluation methods for transport infrastructure investments to ensure that scarce resources are allocated in a way that maximises their net return to society.

Fears of job loss and changes in employment status have often led workers and unions to oppose privatization and to take actions that delay or block reforms. Many developing country governments have been reluctant to undertake reforms because of labor opposition and the political costs involved. Such difficulties are often compounded by concerns about the social impact of reforms, particularly in countries where social safety nets and labor markets are lacking. The objective of the Toolkit, which includes a CD-ROM, is to provide practical tools and information to help policy makers and practitioners deal with these sensitive issues. The Toolkit helps governments identify and select appropriate strategies and approaches, offers guidelines for design and implementation based on best practice and actual experience, and indicates the factors influencing the choice of strategy and options. The Toolkit is illustrated with examples, checklists, and templates that walk decision makers through best practice methodologies.