Providing Policy Makers with Timely Advice: The Timeliness-Rigor Trade-off

Clive Bell and Lyn Squire

The World Bank Economic Review, 2017, vol. 31, issue 2, 553-569

Abstract: Policy makers bemoan the lack of research findings to guide urgent decisions, whereas researchers' professional code puts rigor first. This article argues that provisional assessments, produced early in the research cycle, can bridge the gap. Numerous case studies point to the importance of early interaction with policy makers and the delivery of brief, policy-focused papers; but preliminary analyses may be flawed and so increase the chances of a wrong decision. This article demonstrates analytically that a preliminary assessment, supported by the offer of more refined research, provides an option that is superior, on average, to the current practice of submitting a final report at the end of the research cycle. Where practical implementation is concerned, it calls for donor-funded subsidies to promote the use of provisional assessments and for a rapid, independent, professional review process to ensure their quality. While the research-policy exchange in developing countries is a complex, context-specific phenomenon, the proposal offered here holds out some promise of improving decisions in the public sphere under a wide range of circumstances.

JEL-codes: D61 H43 O20 O21 O22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhw005 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Providing policy makers with timely advice: the timeliness-rigor trade-off (2016)
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:oup:wbecrv:v:31:y:2017:i:2:p:553-569.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The World Bank Economic Review is currently edited by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik

More articles in The World Bank Economic Review from World Bank Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().