Does participation improve project performance: establishing causality with subjective data

Jonathan Isham (), Deepa Narayan and Lant Pritchett ()

No 1357, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Development practitioners are coming to a consensus that participation by the intended beneficiaries improves project performance. But is there convincing evidence that this is true? Skeptics have three objections: 1)"Participation is not objective -- project rankings are subjective; 2) this subjectivity leads to"halo effects"; 3) better project performance may have increased beneficiary participation rather than the other way around -- a statistical association is not proof of cause and effect. The authors show methodologically how to answer each of these objections. Subjectivity does not preclude reliable cardinal measurement. Halo effects do not appear to induce a strong upward bias in estimating the effect of participation. Finally, instrumental variables estimation can help establish a structural cause and effect relationship between participation and project performance -- at least in the rural water supply projects they studied.

Keywords: Governance Indicators; ICT Policy and Strategies; Health Economics&Finance; Statistical&Mathematical Sciences; Poverty Monitoring&Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-09-30
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentSer ... d/PDF/multi0page.pdf (application/pdf)

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

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank
Address: 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().