Chapter 12 Evaluating Aid Impact: Approaches and Findings

There is a substantial literature evaluating the impact of aid at the macroeconomic level using cross-country regressions. However, despite econometric advances in recent years, there remain many flaws in this approach. Similar problems beset cross-country analysis of the impact of aid on poverty indicators. More reliable estimates of the poverty impact of aid come from project-level analyses from which can be built up a picture of aid impact at the country level. This paper presents the findings from three such studies carried out by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank.