USAID Launches New Collaboration with Leading Organizations to Improve Agency Cost-Effectiveness
Global consortium will leverage a Nobel Prize-winning approach to guide the fight against global poverty
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A global consortium of leading research institutions, which includes the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, recently announced a $75 million partnership that will contribute vital evidence to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) over the next five years, dramatically improving the cost-effectiveness of its efforts to fight global poverty and promote economic growth.
Led by the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley, “Promoting Impact and Learning with Cost-Effectiveness Evidence (PILCEE)” represents a historic investment by USAID to inform its activities and programs with rigorous evidence about what works to alleviate poverty.
“I came to USAID to help improve the use and generation of cost-effectiveness evidence across humanitarian and development outcomes at the world’s largest bilateral aid agency,” said Dean Karlan, Chief Economist at USAID. “Our new cooperative agreement with the excellent consortium led by CEGA is an important step towards this goal, and also is a path to influencing academic research to help deliver more research tailored to policy needs.”
PILCEE brings together a worldwide network of over 1,500 researchers — including over 250 from low- and middle-income countries — to guide USAID’s work by evaluating the impacts of Agency-funded programs and synthesizing findings from the growing evidence base. In doing so, PILCEE will generate important insights for the global development community about the most economical ways to improve lives and promote global growth.
USAID will be able to use this detailed evidence to clearly link its investments in economic growth, global health, agriculture and other areas to improvements in human lives and community well-being around the world, including when the desired outcome is not achieved.
Craig McIntosh, a professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-director of the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab.
The program prioritizes evidence from randomized controlled trials, an approach recognized by the Nobel Prize committee as transformational in understanding promising solutions to global poverty. CEGA and the consortium partners — including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA), the Pulte Institute for Global Development within the Keough School at the University of Notre Dame, and several others (listed below) — are experts in the field of measuring program impact. Together, the consortium has produced, analyzed, and translated more than 1,800 randomized controlled trials in nearly 100 countries over the past two decades, in addition to extensive research translation and dissemination work.
“We are excited to be building this close collaboration with the preeminent U.S. government development agency,” said Craig McIntosh, a professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-director of the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab. “With the costing work being led from UC San Diego, this consortium presents a fantastic opportunity to add rigor to the investments made by USAID, making sure that taxpayer dollars achieve the maximum possible reduction in global poverty.”
Importantly, PILCEE prioritizes the measurement of how much programs cost, in addition to their impacts. This will make it much easier for USAID and its peers to compare different program design options and decide which ones are the “best buys.”
As governments face overlapping crises and constrained budgets, this groundbreaking collaboration promises to set an example for aid agencies that want to leverage the power of evidence to do the most good for people experiencing poverty and humanitarian crises around the world.
To learn more about PILCEE, please visit www.usaid.gov/pilcee.
PILCEE Consortium Partners
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
CARE
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
International Rescue Committee
Mercy Corps
Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA)
Pulte Institute for Global Development at the University of Notre Dame
Save the Children
UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy
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