The Competitiveness Policy Evaluation Lab (or ComPEL) is an umbrella program under the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank Group (WBG). It supports the use of impact evaluation clusters in advancing the global knowledge frontier on ‘how to achieve impact,’ building capacity of client institutions and WBG staff, and improving the quality of project design and implementation in the areas of firm performance and productivity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and SME finance.
Impact evaluations under the program help development practitioners, country counterparts, and partners to identify the mechanisms of impacts that work best and inform their decisions on project design, course correction, scale, continuity, selection of cost-effective solutions, and/or targeting.
The Competitiveness Policy Evaluation Lab follows a cluster approach to impact evaluation to determine the impacts attributable to programs in the areas of firm performance and productivity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and SME finance.
The idea is to identify the mechanisms to achieve more impact in key programs and at the same time push the global knowledge frontier on the contributions of the private sector to economic growth and poverty alleviation.
The selection of impact evaluations under a cluster is carried out through competitive rounds involving the identification and capacity building of candidate projects, the technical review and endorsement of detailed methodologies, and the provision of implementation funding to few strategic proposals.
The following three clusters are currently under implementation:
|
|
|
Connecting Businesses to Improve Market Access |
Targeting Firms with
|
Improving Regulatory Efficiency for Firms |
Firms can improve performance if new connections are made to other firms, whether they are buyers, suppliers, or peers. Linkages through export promotion, supplier development support, or productive alliances are examples. |
Interventions can have larger impacts if firms with specific characteristics are targeted. Scoring schemes to rank startups and business plan competitions are prime examples. |
The cost of business compliance with regulations can be lower with more efficient monitoring, information, and accountability schemes. |
The following is a curated list of papers related to ComPEL’s focus areas, summarizing existing research and identifying evidence gaps.
Connecting business to improve market access |Targeting firms with high growth potential | Improving regulatory efficiency for firms | Cross-cutting areas
Connecting business to improve market access
H. Breinlich, D. Donaldson, P.J. Nolen and G. Wright, July 2017
Rocco Macchiavello and Josepa Miquel-Florensa, February 2017
Jing Cai and Adam Szeidl, December, 2016
Meredith Startz, November 2016
Marcel Fafchamps and Simon Quinn, Sep 2016
Wyatt Brooks, Kevin Donovan, and Terence R. Johnson, May 2016
Caio Piza, Tulio Antonio Cravo, Linnet Taylor, Lauro Gonzalez, Isabel Musse, Isabela Furtado, Ana C. Sierra, Samer Abdelnour, April 2016
Julia Cajal Grossi, January 2016
Morgan Hardy and Jamie McCasland, November 2015
David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff, August 2015
David Atkin, Amit A. Khandelwal and Adam Osman, November 2014
Pol Antras and C. Fritz Foley, May 2014
Michael Grimm and Anna Luisa Paffhausen, May 2014
Nicholas Bloom, Gregory Fischer, Imran Rasul, Andres Rodriguez‐Clare, Tavneet Suri, Christopher Udry, Eric Verhoogen, Christopher Woodruff, and Giulia Zane, December 2013
Julie Subervie and Isabelle Vagneron, Oct 2013
Rocco Macchiavello and Ameet Morjaria, June 2013
Yoonyoung Cho and Maddalena Honorati, April, 2013
David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff, September 2012
Irani Arraiz and Rodolfo Stucchi, May 2012
Rocco Macchiavello, June 2010
Solomon Asfaw, Dagmar Mithofer, and Hermann Waibel, 2009
Nava Ashraf, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan, January, 2008
Targeting firms with high growth potential
Arti Grover Goswami, Denis Medvedev, and Ellen Olafsen, 2019
)
Marriane Bertrand and Breno Crepon
Irani Arraiz, Miriam Bruhn, Claudia Ruiz Ortega, and Rodolfo Stucci, 2017
David McKenzie, August 2017
David McKenzie, March 2017
Reshmaan Hussam, Natalia Rigol and Benjamin Roth, November 2016
Matthew Groh, Nandini Krishnan, David McKenzie and Tara Vishwanath, July 2016
Marcel Fafchamps and Christopher Woodruff, April 2016
Nicholas Bloom, Benn Eifert, Aparjit Mahajan, David McKenzie and John Roberts, January 2013
f
Suresh De Mel, David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff, February 2012
OECD, 2010
Improving regulatory efficiency for firms
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Clement Imbert, Santhosh Mathew and Rohini Pande, November 2016
Claudio Ferraz, Frederico Finan and Dimitri Szerman, February 2016
Building Safety Inspections and Audits in Peru: An Impact Evaluation (website)
Paul Gertler and Ana Goicoechea, 2017
Esther Duflo, Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan, October 2014
Chang Tai-Hsieh and Peter J. Klenow, August, 2014
Karthik Murlidharan, Paul Niehuas and Sandip Suktankar, March 2014
Aminur Rahman, August 2013
David McKenzie and Miriam Bruhn, June 2013
Giacomo De Giorgi and Aminur Rehman, June 2013
Gustavo Henrique de Andrade, Miriam Bruhn and David McKenzie, May 2013
Yves Zamboni and Stephan Litschig, January 2013
World Bank Group, 2013
Esther Dulfo, Rema Hanna and Stephen P. Ryan, June 2012
Abhijit V. Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Daniel Keniston and Nina Singh, April 2012
Chiara Criscuolo, Ralf Martin, Henry Overman and John Van Reenen, February 2012
Benjamin A. Olken, 2007
Francisco Campos, Michael Frese, Markus Goldstein, Leonardo Iacovone, Hillary Johnson, David McKenzie, and Mona Mensmann, 2017
Francisco Campos, Aidan Coville, Ana M. Fernandes, Markus Goldstein, and David McKenzie, December 2012
Last Updated: Aug 26, 2019
Impact Evaluation Workshops:
ComPEL hosts flagship impact evaluation workshops gathering a large number of staff, country counterparts, researchers, and partners, with the following objectives:
Lisbon, Portugal May 31-June 03, 2022: Agenda
Athens, September 2019: Agenda
Mexico City, February 2017: Agenda and Presentations;
Istanbul, May 2015: Agenda and Presentations
Paris, November 2012:
