Backing what works? Social Impact Bonds and evidence-informed policy and practice

Alec Fraser, Stefanie Tan, Annette Boaz and Nicholas Mays

Public Money & Management, 2020, vol. 40, issue 3, 195-204

Abstract: Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) offer an opportunity to explore the use of evidence to inform public policy and commissioning decisions in both discursive and practical terms in what are frequently highly politicized contexts. We identify three potential mechanisms by which SIBs may promote evidence use and explore these through empirical findings drawn from a three-year evaluation of SIBs applied to health and social care in the English NHS.This paper highlights three mechanisms by which SIBs may encourage evidence-informed policy-making. First, the ability of SIB financing to promote specific interventions for which a positive evidence base already exists. Second, the opportunities that SIB-financed programmes offer for the promotion of evidence use through improved local data collection practices. Third, the opportunities that SIB-financed interventions offer for formal evaluation. The authors tested these mechanisms; the implications of the results for policy-makers, public managers and other interested parties are presented in the paper.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09540962.2020.1714303 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:pubmmg:v:40:y:2020:i:3:p:195-204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RPMM20

DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2020.1714303

Access Statistics for this article

Public Money & Management is currently edited by Michaela Lavender

More articles in Public Money & Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().