All across the world, there is great interest in how countries can pursue economic growth while at the same time achieving greater inclusion of all the people and without running down environmental capital and aggravating climate change. This event marks the launch of the book “Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development” by Visiting Professor Vinod Thomas and Assistant Professor Namrata Chindarkar of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, which is about the evaluation tools that can help shed light on this question.”
Evaluation of efforts to generate and sustain economic growth remains a priority This book does not take the eye off this growth objective but adds to this the bigger picture of inclusion, sustainability and governance. To get to these aggregative goals, it relies on pieces that can be harnessed from three complementary approaches in evaluation: impact evaluation, cost-benefit analysis and objectives-based evaluation.
The innovation of this book lies in connecting evaluation tools with the economics of promoting growth, inclusion, and environmental protection underpinned by better governance. These goals, thought of as “wicked problems” that are too big and too complex to be evaluated and therefore often left out of systematic evaluation exercises, are given centre stage. The book then extensively uses recent case studies to demonstrate the application of evaluation tools to assess these emerging issues.
The book offers practical guidance on development evaluation to a wide range of readers including practitioners who actually conduct evaluations, students who wish to learn about evaluation, or policymakers who make use of evaluation studies for decision making.
The overarching objective of this book is to explicate the connection between evaluation and economic policy. The basic message is that evaluation, valuable a tool that it is, comes to life only when its interconnection with the socio-economic policies is recognized and taken advantage of. But in doing so, it pays to get the analytical methods and priorities of evaluation right as a series of examples here illustrate.
There will be a panel discussion on “Evaluation of Sustainable Development Goals” after the book launch.
