The Navarra Center for International Development has been selected to develop two impact evaluation proposals under the Transparency and Accountability Initiative of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Alex Armand, resident researcher of the NCID, will lead the project, which aims to designing two experiments in Kenya and Mozambique. The Center has already a strong network with policymakers and researchers in these two countries and seeks to enrich this relationship with this project.
“Through applied research, we intend to generate ideas to solve chronic social problems associated with poverty”, said Alex Armand.
The project will implement and monitor different interventions related to civil society and governance of natural resources. This is especially relevant given recent discoveries of natural gas and oil reserves in both countries.
“The objective of this proposal is to design two impact evaluation projects in Kenya and Mozambique to understand how increases in transparency related to natural resource extraction affect individual and collective behavior in different dimensions,” explained Alex Armand.
These two countries were chosen for their peculiar characteristics that have a relatively small contribution to GDP in term of natural resource extraction, these sectors are highly localized and are recently growing fast.
“Natural resource wealth can be an important asset for the development of a country, as soon as its benefits are distributed to the productive side of the country. However, it is unclear how to best drive development by improving governance and transparency in the management of natural resources,” said Alex Armand.
The team of this project is:
Alex Armand, is a researcher at NCID, a Visiting Professor at the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Navarra and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. He researches on development economics and he has extensive experience in the implementation of RCTs and evaluation of social programs in Eastern Europe and health programs in Africa.
Pedro Vicente, is an Associate Professor of Economics at Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, an invited Lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Research Associate at NCID. He researches on development economics, with an emphasis on political economy issues, and a special interest in Africa.
Robert Mudida, is a Senior Lecturer at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. He is currently the director of the Master of Public Policy and Management and has considerable lecturing experience in the areas of economics, financial management and international finance. His areas of interest include institutional economics, development economics and the economics of conflict.
António Torres de Sousa Cruz is the Director of the Centre of Studies in Economics and Management (CEEG) at the Faculty of Economics of the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. He has an extensive experience in the Ministry of Planning and Development and the Ministry of Planning and Finance in Mozambique. His research interests are economic growth, international trade, macroeconomic policies, enterprise development, changes in productivity and technology.
Pedro Mendi, is Associate Professor in the NCID and at the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Navarra. His research interests focus on the study of international technology transfer and on vertical firm relations.