Comparing Aid Agencies

by Emily Kallaur

Ariel BenYishay and Franck S. Wiebe of the Millennium Challenge Corporation have just written a paper entitled “Can Aid Agencies Follow Best Practices?: An Assessment of the MCC’s Aid Practices Based on Easterly and Pfutze (2008)”. The paper assesses the MCC’s performance according to indicators of aid agency “best practice” as determined by Easterly and Pfutze.

In the original paper by Easterly and Pfutze, all U.S. agencies providing aid were evaluated in the aggregate. Although (to date) the MCC disburses only a small fraction of total U.S. development assistance, its approach and policies are quite innovative and contrast sharply with other U.S. agencies which follow a more traditional approach, making the MCC a compelling individual case study. When applying the Easterly and Pfutze evaluation criteria solely to the MCC rather than U.S. aid agencies as a whole, BenYishay and Wiebe find that it ranks 8th out of 40 donors, compared to 16th out of 39 for U.S. assistance as a whole.

It’s certainly debatable whether there are universal “best practices” for aid agencies, and if so whether Easterly and Pfutze have correctly identified them. In any case, this result for the MCC is an interesting contribution to the debate.