Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Income distribution, poverty and inequality.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
 | ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy. |
Analysis of the fiscal choices an independent Scotland would face.
Case studies that give a flavour of the areas where IFS research has an impact on society.
Reforming the tax system for the 21st century.
A peer-reviewed quarterly journal publishing articles by academics and practitioners.
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Centre for the Evaluation of Development Policies
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Date started: 01 May 2004
Poverty eradication and development will not be brought about by macroeconomic policies alone. While such policies are essential, ensuring that the poor can participate in the economy is an essential ingredient of pro-poor growth policies. In turn, this requires interventions that identify and address specific market failures. Such interventions include those to remove obstacles to the accumulation of human capital build up in the form of health and skills of the poor; to provide them access to investment opportunities, via access to capital; and to ensure that markets work in favour of the poor.
Much development support has long been in the form of such specific interventions, including nutrition support programs and food-for-work programs, education support programs via school meals, micro-credit initiatives, skill acquisition programs and social funds. Much has been learned about the difficulties of designing such interventions from broad practical experience and from specific case studies. However, even when some interventions have been deemed successful, it is difficult to export these experiences to different context and situations. One reason for this difficulty is the lack of systematic and large-scale evaluations of the impact of these interventions on the poor.
The new Centre is committed to identifying success and failures in interventions and to promoting best practice in evaluating and conducting interventions. In particular, the Centre will be a focal point for research on the impact of specific interventions in health, nutrition, skill acquisition, education, credit, insurance and labour. It will conduct evaluations of specific interventions in developing countries, provide support to institutions conducting evaluations, engage in advocacy on best practice in terms of evaluations and on the design of interventions itself.
The main purpose of an evaluation, in addition to the direct assessment of the effect of a program, has to be the improvement of existing programs and evaluating the possibility of extending them to environments different from those for which they were first designed. For this to be possible, it is crucial to understand why a given program works or does not work. Such an understanding can only be achieved by modelling individual behaviour and the reaction of individuals to the economic incentives provided by the program.
An important implication of this focus is that detailed micro-level data will be required to conduct such evaluations. We need data measuring the response of individual agents (individuals, households, or firms) to the proposed program and, more generally, to economic incentives. Some of these micro data are collected for the explicit purpose of evaluating a particular program. An important part of the activities of the Centre will be the design of such surveys. There are important lessons that can be learned in this area.
All available publications
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Presentation given at the Centre for the Study of African Economics Annual Conference 2013
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This EBRD impact brief reports on a randomised field experiment in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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This paper analyses the impact of informality on growth and wages in developing countries.
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We use an RCT to analyze the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction, child and teenage labour supply, and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Article published in the Journal of Development Economics, 99(1):68-79
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A longitudinal dataset of approx. 3200 women aged 17-43 years and their households collected in Mchinji District, Malawi in 2008-09 and 2009-10.
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This presentation was given in Washington DC to World Bank economists on 28 June 2012.
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Microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending to individual lending. This EBRD Impact Brief presents some such evidence from a recent randomised field experiment in Mongolia.
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Despite the rapid expansion and increasing importance of private education in developing countries, very little is known about the impact of studying in private schools on educational attainment and wages. This paper contributes to fi
lling this gap by estimating the returns to private high schools in Mexico.
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Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices, and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomised intervention in rural Malawi which, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources.
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This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the father from the household affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia.
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This study evaluates an intervention in the dairy subsector by an Indian livelihood promotion institution and conducts a detailed analysis of the main cost and bene t factors of the activity.
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Although microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending towards individual lending, this strategic shift is not substantiated by sufficient empirical evidence on the impact of both types of lending on borrowers. We present such evidence from a randomised field experiment in rural Mongolia.
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The FINISH project will test whether the use of microfinance for rural sanitation can be implemented at scale, in order to: accelerate access by the poor to demand-led sanitation, resulting in health, economic, and social impact; and greater sustainability in sanitation service delivery.
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Orazio Attanasio gave a lecture on child development in developing countries as part of Lunch Hour Lecture series at University College London.
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Randomised trials have helped to shape policy in the developing world. Drawing on examples, we argue that it's time the UK made better use of this important tool for evidence-based policymaking.
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Until recently microfinance - the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship - was cheered as an excellent policy to alleviate poverty. But more recently such policies have been viewed less favourably. What does the evidence show on the effectiveness of such schemes, and how can they be reformed to operate better?
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FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health.
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This is the final paper of a study aimed at building capacity for the distributional analysis of tax reforms in Mexico and other similar middle‐income countries.
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FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health.
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This paper lays out the methodological issues involved in finding the distributional impact of the tax changes in Mexica and describes the approach the authors will take in their analysis.
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This paper tests whether family size has a causal effect on girls' education in Mexico.
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We examine the effect of large cash transfers on the consumption of food by poor households in rural Mexico.
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Despite current emphasis on health insurance expansions in developing countries, inefficient consumer incentives for over-use of medical care are an important counterbalancing concern.
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In this paper we try to raise caution against the consequences of the overwhelming drive for microfinance institutions to become financially self-sustainable-more often than not pushed into this by international organizations.
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The period from 2003 to the summer of 2008 saw significant and sustained increases in global food prices, especially for staple goods such as maize, rice and wheat.
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This is an update in February 2010 on the progress of the FINISH project in India.
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This multidisciplinary book brings together a selection of essays on South Asia, seen through the prism of conflict.
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This report provides a description of the first wave of household data collected for a randomised field experiment in Bosnia.
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The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program implemented in rural areas in Colombia since 2002, on school enrollment and child labor.
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In this paper, we propose a measure of social capital based on behaviour in a public goods game.
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This paper studies migration decisions of very poor households in an environment with a high level of violence.
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This is a case study by Techneos, who produce survey software, on the use of their mobile survey software by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and MaiMwana to look at poverty and reproductive health in Malawi.
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We study food Engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia.
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This presentation looks at the practicalities of collecting data in a developing country using electronic equipment.
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This study evaluates an intervention in the dairy subsector by an Indian livelihood promotion institution.
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This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the head from the household, mainly due to death or divorce, affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia.
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This report provides an in-depth description of the first wave of household data collected for a randomised field experiment to measure the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction among poor rural women in Mongolia.
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This project analyses the findings from a series of "public goods" games that were conducted in the spring and winter of 2006 in 103 municipalities in rural and urban Colombia.
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Presented at the European Economic Association conference in Milan, 27-31 August 2008.
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This paper models how migration both influences and responds to differences in disease prevalence between cities, regions and countries, and show how the possibility of migration away from high-prevalence areas affects long-run steady state disease prevalence.
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In this paper we propose a measure of social capital based on the behaviour in a public good game.
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This paper evaluates AGEs (Apoyo a la Gestion Escolar or School Management Support) and examines whether the increased parental participation that they brought about helped to create a more conducive learning environment and improve students' learning outcomes.
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This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized training program for disadvantaged youth introduced in Colombia in 2005 on the employment and earnings of trainees.
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An Edepo working paper.
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This paper presents evidence on whether and how a household's behaviour is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family.
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This paper studies the impact of a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia on the total consumption of very poor households and on its components.
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The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme implemented in rural areas in Colombia in 2002, on school enrolment and child labour.
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This report, in Spanish, evaluates the first wave of the survey, Familias en Acción.
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This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Acción on a variety of outcomes one year after its implementation.
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We study the prices of basic commodities that are relatively homogeneous in some rural communities in Colombia.
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This study assesses whether the microfinance institution SEWA Bank, India, is meeting its objective of raising its members' income.
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We provide estimates of how the programme has influenced nutrition and health-related indicators for children in the short term, roughly one year after its implementation.
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Colombia's civil conflict over the last 40 years has displaced many families and individuals from their villages of origin.
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In this paper we evaluate the effect of a large welfare program in rural Mexico.
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We estimate the impact on school enrolment of a large welfare programme in Colombia, Familias en Acción.
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27 January 2005 |
Public Economics Lectures |
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This lecture focuses on Familias en Accion, a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia, evaluating its effects and results in relation to education, health and nutrition.
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In this Briefing Note, we will focus on the programme Familias en Acción, the conditional cash-transfer programme implemented by the Colombian government from 2001/02.
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We study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombian children living in small municipalities.
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In this paper we evaluate the effect of a large nutrition programme in rural Colombia on children nutritional status, school achievement and female labour supply.
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We investigate the effects of the drastic tariff reductions of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia on the wage distribution.
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This paper models the short and medium-run impact of aid on migration, con-sidering alternatively the effect of unconditional and conditional cash transfers to financially constrained households.
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In this paper we evaluate the effect of a large welfare program in rural Mexico.
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In this paper we study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombianchildren living in small municipalities.
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We study the effects of risk and uncertainty on education and childlabour in developing countries.
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This report describes the survey that was carried out in 122 communities in rural Colombia bythe consortium formed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Econometria and SEI as the baselinefor the impact evaluation of Familias en Acción, a programme to foster the accumulation ofhuman capital in rural Colombia, run by the Colombian government.
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This is the first wave evaluation report of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme.
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This is the baseline evaluation report of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme.
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This paper presents evidence on the relationship between shocks to relative male wages and changes in household consumption in Mexico during the 1990s decade, which is a period characterized by high volatility.
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This note outlines the preliminary findings of the evaluation of a welfare programme in Colombia, Familias en Accíon. The programme aims to foster nutritional and educational development for the children of poor families in rural and urban communities, and the evaluation will use data collected from treatment and control areas to discover what methods are effective and how they work. In this note, we describe what the data show about the population and what the preliminary findings indicate about the efficacy of the programme.
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In this paper we discuss the issues involved with the evaluation of social interventions and with the attempts at 'scaling them up'.
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Thepaper studies land-market adjustment in the wake of Vietnam's reforms aiming toestablish a free market in land-use rights following de-collectivization.
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We assess the realized land allocation against explicit counter-factuals, including theallocation implied by a competitive market-based privatization.
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This paper presents evidence on the relationship between shocks torelative male wages, and changes in household consumption in Mexico during the1990s decade, which is a period characterized by high volatility.
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We investigate the effects of the drastic tariff reductions of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia onthe wage distribution.
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