International Development
The challenge of international development requires thinking beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, and RAND Europe excels in providing interdisciplinary expertise and policy-oriented perspectives. By cutting across team-based expertise and knowledge, our research in international development addresses complex problems with tailored methodologies and appropriate and innovative perspectives.
Examples of our international development-related research show the breadth of our efforts:
- evaluation work on investments in information and communications technologies (ICT), health and other areas
- research on social security programmes, safety nets and conditional cash transfers
- the role of climate change and migration
- monitoring and evaluation of stabilisation operations
Clients include the Wellcome Trust, UK Research Councils, the World Bank, UK Stabilisation Unit, and several donors.
Featured Events
As the leader of a research evaluation of the Wellcome Trust's African Institutions Initiative, Senior Analyst Sonja Marjanovic was a presenter and panelist at a conference organised by the London International Development Centre and the Association of Commonwealth Universities. Marjanovic spoke about how to evaluate complex, networked research capacity-building interventions.
Senior Analyst Priscillia Hunt is presenting her research on developing macroeconomic models to support large-scale malaria prevention programmes, at the Wilton Park Sustainable Development Conference on Malaria on 20-22 February. Hunt and colleagues are working to capture a broader view of malaria's impacts on the economy and estimate the potential effects that reduced malaria could have on consumption inequality, poverty, and dynamic growth over time.
Many complex issues surround the use of antiretroviral (ARV) therapy as HIV prevention, and seen in the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision to consider an ARV drug not just for HIV treatment but also to prevent HIV/AIDS. RAND Europe is partnering with several organisations on Mapping Pathways, a project exploring potential treatment regimes and conducting research, community engagement, and policy work in the U.S., India, and South Africa.
The performance of health systems is a key determinant of the inclusiveness of economic growth. Exclusionary, poor quality health care worsens impoverishment, while inclusive health care redistributes the benefits of growth toward the poor and ill. With Kenya and Tanzania as case studies, RAND Europe is exploring the extent to which unexploited potential synergies between industrial development and health systems can strengthen and contribute to faster and more inclusive growth?
The World Bank is interested in the linkages between governance, service delivery and human development outcomes. The Human Development Chief Economist's Office has asked RAND Europe to determine if OECD countries have been effective at using provider incentives in health and social protection policy areas, as their experiences may be able to inform programmes used in developing countries.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) help to empower citizens and transform economic life. An important policy challenge is to identify and harness the benefits while mitigating the risks created by the new technologies. At the World Bank's request, RAND Europe helped develop a framework for thinking about ICT use in MENA. The report builds on an earlier research which benchmarked indicators for the knowledge economy in the region, analysing associations between indicators of ICT diffusion and development.
Normally, technology transfer involves developed countries forging ahead with innovation while others adopt technologies in their wake. This is an exploratory study of health technologies explicitly developed for developing countries being transferred from South to North. While it concludes that many of the factors key to successful transfer are highly contextual, it will be of interest to policymakers who find their concerns beginning to overlap (such as in relation to cost).
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2012 RAND Corporation.