@article{Arcand:283799,
      recid = {283799},
      author = {Arcand, Jean-Louis L},
      title = {The (lack of) impact of impact: why impact evaluations  seldom lead to evidence-based policymaking},
      publisher = {Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le  développement international},
      address = {Clermont-Ferrand. 2013},
      number = {BOOK},
      series = {Working paper ; 73},
      pages = {24 p.},
      year = {2013},
      abstract = {A recurring puzzle to many academics and some policymakers  is why impact evaluations, which have become something of a  cottage industry in the development field, have so little  impact on actual policymaking. In this paper, I study the  impact of impact evaluations. I show, in a simple Bayesian  framework embedded within a standard contest success  function-based model of competition amongst anti-evaluation  policymakers, Bayesian policymakers, and frequentist  evaluators,that the likelihood of a program being cancelled  is a decreasing function both of the impact estimated by  the evaluation and of the prior on whose basis the program  was approved to begin with. Moreover, the probability of  cancellation is a decreasing function of the effectiveness  of the influence exerted by frequentist evaluators. Since  the latter’s effectiveness in terms of lobbying in favor of  their findings in the real world is likely to be close to  zero, the likelihood of cancelling a program that was  approved in the first place, despite its suffering a highly  negative evaluation, is extremely low. The model thus  provides one possible explanation for why impact  evaluations have so little impact in the realm of  decisionmaking, and why they have contributed so little to  evidence-based policymaking.},
      url = {http://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/283799},
}