Author: Idrissa Noma Publisher: ISBN: 9781267091376 Category : Economic assistance, American Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a U.S. government agency whose purpose is to promote economic growth and reduce poverty in low and low middle-income countries. It uses indicators to endorse countries eligibilities for international development funding. These indicators are related to economic growth and are developed by independent third parties (e.g., United Nations, World Bank), to evaluate a country's policy performance in three specific areas: (1) Ruling Justly, (2) Investing in People, and (3) Encouraging Economic Freedom (MCC, 2011). The MCC weighs indicators equally regardless of their myopic in-country relevancy to economic development. The goal of this study is to first replicate the MCC funding mechanism then examine the effect of weighting each of the MCC's indicators differently and analyzing the subsequent effects on a countries' funding eligibilities. This study found that many countries were marginally below the median because of one outlier which skewed the mean score. The results signify both the transparency of the calculations and the MCC's funding decisions. Given that by definition low-income countries need economic assistance, and such assistance is often times distributed through indicators like those used by the MCC; this thesis suggests making the index holistic to capture the relative strengths and weaknesses of each country.
Author: Daniel Albert Grant Publisher: ISBN: Category : Economics Languages : en Pages : 84
Book Description
Established in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an American bilateral aid agency that enters five-year funding agreements with countries demonstrating sufficiently high scores in seventeen eligibility measures. Limiting eligibility allows the MCC to only fund countries that possess the institutional frameworks hypothetically necessary for growth and effective use of aid money. While these indicators have a large amount of theoretical support, there has - to date - been no empirical evaluation of whether or not they (grouped in this way) actually are significantly associated with positive health and economic development outcomes. Using fixed-effects models to analyze the relationship between lagged eligibility indicators and three development outcomes (infant mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, and GDP per capita), we find that the majority of indicators in low income countries show significant correlations, while the majority in lower middle income countries do not. Assessing the appropriateness of the median-based eligibility cutoffs, we conclude that while some of the data may support slightly stricter or more relaxed standards, the indicators are generally within acceptable ranges of expected marginal effects and political considerations may outweigh statistical concerns.
Author: Frederic Sautet Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 24
Book Description
The Millennium Challenge Account's (MCA) focus on results and creating incentives for developing countries to enact good policy continues to hold promise for a well-needed change in government-driven international development assistance. The continued success of the MCA will depend on the ability of the leadership to allow the mission - to reduce poverty through growth - to guide decisions. The Criteria and Methodology for Determining the Eligibility of Candidate Countries for Millennium Challenge Account Assistance in FY2006 reemphasizes the MCC's commitment to economic freedom and a strong entrepreneurial environment as the driver of economic progress. However, it also contains troubling proposals for new indicators that lose sight of this focus. With so many problems surrounding development, it is tempting to construe the MCA as a new fix-all for development. However, this will not help developing countries or the MCA. Economic development brings social benefits such as better health, a clean environment, and quality education. The MCA must continue to encourage countries to enact policies that create the conditions for economic prosperity. If, rather, it attempts to stimulate the consequences of development before addressing its causes, it is almost assured to fail on both accounts. The process set forward to develop a new quot;Natural Resource Managementquot; indicator must be reconsidered, and any new indicators must clearly demonstrate their relationship to the MCC's mission. The MCC needs to reconsider this and similar actions proposed in the report. These actions threaten to: Prioritize narrow interests over economic growth and are likely to achieve neither, Contradict the intent of the legislation that authorized the MCA and undermine its core principles, and Confuse the consequences of development with the causes of development, encouraging economically harmful policy. The importance of clearly articulating good indicators cannot be underestimated. Because of the strong incentives the MCA creates for countries wish to become eligible to receive funds, the MCA's influence reaches far beyond the dollars it spends. Poor choices now will have severe consequences as more countries tailor reforms to the indicators MCC chooses.
Author: Curt Tarnoff Publisher: DIANE Publishing ISBN: 1437921205 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 34
Book Description
On March 14, 2002, Pres. Bush outlined a proposal for a major new U.S. foreign aid initiative. The Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) provides assistance through a competitive selection process to developing nations that are pursuing political and economic reforms in three areas: ruling justly, investing in people, and fostering economic freedom. The initial plan had been to fund the MCC annually at $5 billion by FY 2006, but this figure has never been reached. Contents of this report: (1) Most Recent Developments; (2) Overview; (3) Background; (4) Implementation; (5) Select Issues: Funding; Authorizing Legislation and Reform; Compact Size; Speed of Implementation; Sectors; Impact; Changing Costs; Role of USAID.
Author: World Bank Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0821375539 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 124
Book Description
This independent evaluation of the Doing Business Indicators assesses the methods and processes used to construct the indicators, their relevance to development outcomes, and their usefulness to policy makers and other stakeholders. It makes recommendations for improving the collection and presentation of data and for greater clarity in communicating what the indicators can and cannot capture.
Author: David Gootnick Publisher: DIANE Publishing ISBN: 1437910777 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 55
Book Description
The Millennium Challenge Corp., now in its 4th year of operations, is to provide aid to developing countries that have demonstrated a commitment to ruling justly, encouraging economic freedom, and investing in people. MCC provides assistance to eligible countries through multiyear compact agreements to fund specific programs targeted at reducing poverty and stimulating economic growth. As of Aug. 2008, MCC had signed compacts with 18 countries totaling approx. $6.3 billion; of the 18 signed compacts, 11 compacts had entered into force, obligating a total of approx. $3 billion. This report includes fact sheets for the 11 MCC compacts that had entered force as of Aug. 2008. Illustrations.
Author: Doug Johnson Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) awards aid to countries that perform well on a set of independently compiled governance indicators. Proponents of this new form of aid argue that 1) aid will be more effective when given to well-governed countries and 2) countries will respond to such rewards by pursuing sound policies. This paper is the first systematic attempt to evaluate the second hypothesis. By exploiting discontinuities in the MCC rules and reform patterns before and after the MCC was created, we are able to estimate the MCC incentive effect. Even though the MCC is still in its infancy, we find substantial evidence that countries respond to MCC incentives by improving their indicators. Controlling for general time trends, potential recipients of MCC funds improve 25 percent more indicators after the MCC was created than before it. While still to early to make a final assessment, a range of specifications yield similar results. We do not find any corresponding increase in growth rates.
Author: Idrissa Noma
Author: Daniel Albert Grant
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Author: Frederic Sautet
Author: Curt Tarnoff
Author: World Bank
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Author: David Gootnick
Author: Doug Johnson
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