Promoting an evidence-based culture: an experiment with Latin-American policymakers

This study intends to identify the effects of a two day face-to-face training program, the Seminar of Impact Evaluation for Development (SEMIDE), that aims to promote impact evaluation (IE) as a tool for enhancing public management in Latin-America. This seminar was designed and implemented by the Impact Evaluation and Policy Learning Department of CAF - Development Bank of Latin-America - and targets Latin-American policymakers with the potential of promoting institutional changes within their institutions. The election of the participants consists of a competitive process that ends with a score for each candidate, followed by a randomized selection of the 35 places among the top 100 candidates. The seminar structure is divided into two sections for each day: 1) Presentations of impact evaluation cases from both academic experts and policymakers, and 2) Practical sessions where participants get the chance to land and apply IE knowledge. We intend to evaluate whether attending this seminar had a positive effect on participants in terms of the promotion and implementation of IEs inside their institutions, their perceptions about the utility of IE, long-lasting knowledge of IE concepts, and other variables. Two editions took place on 2017, in Peru (May 2017) and Argentina (November 2017). The first stage of this study focuses on the Peruvian edition, one year after it took place. We ultimately aim to conduct a multisite experiment that comprise findings on both editions, and potentially include others that are expected to occur during the next two years (most likely in Ecuador and Colombia).