The impact of independence on reported aid performance
利用澳大利亚2019年引入外部审查援助项目绩效评分的数据，研究发现独立性增强导致项目成功评级显著下降，并更准确记录了新冠疫情的影响及对巴布亚新几内亚的援助质量。
• An increasing number of donors release data on aid project performance. We test how robust data are to external review. • We make use of data from Australia which introduced external review of completed project performance scores in 2019. • We show that external review led to a substantial fall in how successful projects were deemed to be. • This raises broader questions about donor project performance data and how such data should best be analysed in the future. • There are ramifications for Australian aid practice, particularly in Papua New Guinea, its largest aid partner. In this paper we test whether the reported performance of aid projects changes when the process of producing project appraisals is made more independent. We do this using a dataset of Australian aid appraisals and take advantage of a change that occurred when a more independent process involving the central aid evaluation unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and external contractors was put in place to review appraisals of recently completed projects. Using difference-in-differences and contrasting assessments of ongoing projects, which the appraisal process was not changed for, and completed projects, where the process was changed, we show that introducing more independence led to a substantial fall in how successful projects were deemed to be. We also show that the change probably led to more accurate recording of COVID-19′s impact on Australian aid, as well as more accurate assessments of the quality of Australia’s aid to Papua New Guinea, its largest aid partner. As we do this, we take care to demonstrate that our findings are robust to the types of methodological issues that can affect difference-in-differences studies.