ODA Analytics Research: Predictive AId
Overview
This research initiative will focus on ODA Analytics Research, which will advance academic understanding of Official Development Assistance (ODA) through comprehensive analysis of its determinants, effects on donor countries, and relationships with other policy domains such as trade, investment, and diplomatic relations. This research aims to:
- Develop a comprehensive literature overview examining what drives ODA allocation decisions, how ODA impacts donor country economies, and how it interrelates with other international policies
- Identify promising research avenues based on literature gaps and potential for novel insights
- Analyze the factors that influence donor decisions on ODA allocation, volume, and targeting
- Produce four high-quality academic papers on novel aspects of ODA dynamics
- Identify potential strategies for displaying useful information and incorporating additional data sources into the IATI UX/UI
- Build the capacity of promising young development practitioners by cultivating advanced data-analytic skills pertinent to emerging data-based decision-making strategies.
The initiative will operate with a two-tiered structure:
- Base Research Team: Core researchers who will provide continuity throughout the project period, handling administrative work, conducting foundational "base research" activities, and providing guidance and support to research residents.
- Research Residents: Residents will be selected through a competitive proposal process, focusing on specific research questions resulting in academic papers, while also contributing to and benefiting from the base research activities.
Through this comprehensive academic investigation, the Lab will explore how to enhance the understanding of existing ODA data. The findings and conceptual frameworks developed will benefit the broader development community by providing analytical insights on data quality challenges. These research outputs are intended to serve as foundational work that could later be utilized in various contexts across the development cooperation ecosystem. The analytical frameworks and methodologies might be applicable to tools such as the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre's PRISM for analysing development cooperation data, potentially enhancing capabilities to derive actionable insights from existing datasets.
Resources
- A Primer on International Aid
- Data for Development: The Uses of Data
- List of development-related data sets (under active development)