Tools for Measuring the full Impacts of Agricultural Interventions Issued on 2021 by International Food Policy Research Institute

A first step in evaluating the effects of agricultural investments in developing countries to recognize that policy makers will almost certainly have multiple objectives. Even policy makers like those at the Millen-nium Challenge Corporation, with a strong focus on ensuring that interventions contribute to growth, also have a keen interest in poverty reduction and other goals such as enhancing gender equity. This presence of multiple goals has profound impacts on the choice of policies and mean it is likely that more than one policy instrument will be needed to best achieve those goals.

The paper shows that benefit cost analysis is a special case of a prototypical model in which welfare impacts are evaluated using their impacts on consumers’ costs of expenditure and on firm profits.