Transcript Document

PSIA Owner’s Manual: A
pro-poor policy toolkit
Antigua and Barbuda
Monday, December 7, 2009
A 10 Step Approach to PSIA
1. Selecting the Reform
2. Identifying stakeholders
3. Understanding transmission channels
4. Assessing institutions
5. Gathering data and information
6. Analyzing impacts
7. Enhancing design and compensatory
schemes
8. Assessing risks
9. Establishing monitoring and evaluation
systems
10. Fostering policy debate and feedback into
policy choice
1. Selecting the reform and mapping
out research questions
Criteria for selection of reform
Expected size and direction of impacts
Prominence of issue in the government’s policy agenda
Timing and urgency of policy or reform
Level of national debate surrounding the reform
Formulating the key questions
Identify key problems/constraints that policy will address
Make development objectives explicit
Formulate causal hypotheses linking objectives to actions
to likely short-term and long-term impacts
Define the alternative (other option, status quo)
Operational lesson 1: identify
reforms
Need for PSIA should emerge from PRS
Identifying reforms for PSIA should be part of
national PRS process (no duplication)
In practice, work in progress. Selection should
strengthen broader process, not
undermine/duplicate it
Selectivity/prioritization essential
Costly and time consuming
PSIA most meaningful and effective when
applied to specific reforms
2. Identifying stakeholders
Stakeholders affected by policy reform positively and
negatively
Differentiated by ethnic, religious, age, spatial, livelihood, or
other criteria
Stakeholders affecting the reform
Institutional stakeholders
Powerful interest groups within the public sector, private
sector, and civil society
Focus on
key characteristics
interests in relation to the policy
importance to the reform, influence on the process
Analytical lesson 2: different groups
Traditionally, distributional impacts measured on
income/consumption groups
Useful to understand overall effectiveness and
comparing aggregate impacts of alternatives
But groups are artificial constructs and do not
allow analysis of behavioral responses
Need also focus on spatial, social, occupational
groups that allow to understand behaviors
 Operational dimensions
3. Understanding transmission
channels
Impacts transmitted through multiple channels:
Employment (Guyana sugar)
Prices – production, consumption, wages (utility prices)
Access to goods and services (credit, basic services)
Assets – physical, natural, financial, human, social (land,
education, health)
Transfers and Taxes (tariffs, subsidies, import tax, VAT)
Authority (power relations, legal regulations, institutional
capacity, political economy)
Analytical lesson 3: Multiple
channels
Burkina Faso macro reform
Authority
X
Ghana electricity
X
Ghana oil subsidies
X
Malawi agricultural markets
X
X
X
Mozambique education
X
X
Rwanda electricity
X
X
Tanzania crop boards
Transfers taxes
Assets
Access
Employment
Price & wages
Most reforms have multiple transmission channels
Impacts might change direction/size when considering them
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
4. Assessing Institutions
Institutions mediate the effect of policy changes on the
welfare of people
Examine relevant social and market institutions
Institutions may themselves be the objective of policy
reforms
Analyze changes in incentives and rules
Policy changes depend on organizations for their
implementation
Incentives, performance and capacity are key
Transaction costs affect reform outcomes
Markets, legal systems, public organizations
5. Gathering data and
information
Map out desirable data and information
Take stock of existing data and analysis
Adapt PSIA to data limitations:
Adapt analytical approach
Collect further data (multiple types)
Postpone the reform
Build data basis and capacity for future
poverty and social impact analysis
6. Analyzing impacts
Expected direction & magnitude of impact
Describe nature and size of principal impacts
Income and non-income impacts
Long-term and short-term impacts
Direct and indirect impacts
State underlying assumptions regarding
Intended benefits
Organizational capacity and institutional performance
Stakeholder behavior, including behaviors of affected
persons, investors and regulators
Analytical lesson 4:
negative and positive impacts
Central concern is the poor
But, PSIA is not only about mitigation
measures
Hence, needs to focus on all impacts, both
positive and negative on all groups
Analysis of support and opposition to reform
Allows for influence on design of the reform,
not only on mitigation
Political economy critical
Analytical lesson 5:
short/long term
Reforms have short and long term impacts
Often linked to direct versus indirect impacts
A same group could have positive net impacts in short
term and negative ones in longer term
Assessing short term impacts is relatively easy
Longer term impacts require more complex and
challenging analysis
Assess importance of short and long term, direct and
indirect impacts
Analyze all relevant ones to define net impacts
7. Enhancing design
& compensatory schemes
In light of analysis of impacts:
Consider an alternate design:
Alternative design
Different pace and sequence
Triggers to invoke additional risk
management measures, reform
modifications or an exit strategy
Consider direct compensation measures
Consider delay or suspension of the
reform
8. Assessing risks
Types of risk:
Institutional risks (reform complexity exceeds institutional
capacity, vested interests in agency)
Political economy risks (interest groups undermine reform or
capture benefits)
Exogenous risks (conflict, financial crisis, terms of trade shocks,
natural disaster)
Country risks (elections or political instability, ethnic conflict,
post-conflict environment)
Assess likelihood of occurrence and importance to
the policy
9. Monitoring & Evaluating Impacts
M&E allows to:
Validate policy analysis
Inform policy adjustment during implementation
Promote ownership of reforms (participatory monitoring)
Promote accountability
M&E should:
Indicators defined before the reform is implemented:
tied to transmission channels and assumptions
correlated with reform
that can be measured in time to suggest improvements
Build on existing systems to develop national monitoring
system and capacity
Operational lesson 2:
Monitoring
PSIA often ex-ante and based on assumptions
Assumptions, actual impacts must be monitored during
implementation to allow corrections if needed
PSIA indicators should be integrated in country
systems to ensure continued improvement
If PSIA elements too specific for country systems,
ensure they will be monitored after end of core PSIA:
NGOs
Development partners on the ground
Research institutes and universities…
10. Fostering policy debate and
feedback into policy choice
PSIA draws on public discussions:
When identifying reform for analysis
When analyzing stakeholders,
When validating technical impact analysis,
When leveraging social accountability.
PSIA should inform policy discussions and
consideration of alternatives
PSIA needs an institutional home to incorporate
results into the policy process
Operational lesson 3:
Analysis design
Analysis typically includes participatory elements
(e.g. stakeholder analysis)
Does not mean analysis is designed in participatory
manner
One doesn’t analyze by consensus. Analysis a
scientific process, based on professional norms and
standards
But methodology must be transparent, in public
domain for informed decision-making process
Operational lesson 4:
Analytical process
No monopoly on who does the research: Government,
university, research institute, NGO, private sector,
development agency…
… as long as methodology transparent, rigorous
Rigor doesn’t mean ignoring stakeholders - their views
are essential inputs
But analysis independent, not an expression of the
views of a particular (vocal) group
Agencies responsible for reform must be part of
analytical process, to be able to utilize the results
Operational lesson 5:
Policy dialogue
PSIA contributes most when closely aligned with ongoing
policy dialogue:
Research design based on options actually considered
Results relate to all stakeholders
Needs to be anchored in government policy cycle (national
PMS, policy research group)
PSIA part of broader policy dialogue
Dissemination of PSIA results is key
Results produced early enough to influence dialogue
Policy processes w/o clear beginning or end
Discrete action part of series of inter-related actions
PSIA one element to inform broader process
PSIA needs to be absorbed by main actors in governments,
civil society and within donor agencies
Ex ante, during, ex post
Analytical lesson 6:
Choice of methods and team
PSIA can use various techniques and tools
Depends on question, data, resources, time
Complementarity, triangulation:
analytical techniques,
quantitative/qualitative data
Building teams: Skills for different aspects
Economists: prices/quantity, equilibrium
Social development specialists: stakeholders, institutions, risks
Sector specialists: policy issue and reform design
 Multi-disciplinary
work provides best rigor, but
expensive and difficult