“We estimate with medium-high confidence that the Spark intervention generates about $28 in village-level income per dollar spent over the first 10 years of the program when villages purchase livestock.”
This screams bullshit. If you believe this to be true, why don’t you invest in this for profit? You could subsequently donate 10x more in just 10 years even if you only capture 1⁄3 of the value added.
How would you make a profit from this? If you charged villagers for the grant, it would just be a loan, and takeup would be dramatically smaller, so you wouldn’t get effects like this.
The revenue generated by a solar panel is very attributable to solar panels because of electric metering. This estimate in contrast is at the village level, includes lots of things that wouldn’t be attributable to the cow (e.g. income multipliers from people spending in village shops).
It’s village level income. Who individually would pay you?
Contracting frictions make it virtually impossible to enforce payment after the fact. If people refuse to pay you the revenue fraction, or claim that they got much less revenue from it then they actually did, then you are shit out of luck.
It’s a well established fact that development interventions have a massively reduced take-up when the price goes from zero to even a small amount. This was a big debate with malaria nets, and the evidence showed that people would dramatically reduce takeup of nets if they had to pay even a negligible amount for them.
“We estimate with medium-high confidence that the Spark intervention generates about $28 in village-level income per dollar spent over the first 10 years of the program when villages purchase livestock.”
This screams bullshit. If you believe this to be true, why don’t you invest in this for profit? You could subsequently donate 10x more in just 10 years even if you only capture 1⁄3 of the value added.
How would you make a profit from this? If you charged villagers for the grant, it would just be a loan, and takeup would be dramatically smaller, so you wouldn’t get effects like this.
If I offered you a free solar panel upgrade, in return for 1⁄3 of the additional revenue it generates, would you accept?
The revenue generated by a solar panel is very attributable to solar panels because of electric metering. This estimate in contrast is at the village level, includes lots of things that wouldn’t be attributable to the cow (e.g. income multipliers from people spending in village shops).
It’s village level income. Who individually would pay you?
Contracting frictions make it virtually impossible to enforce payment after the fact. If people refuse to pay you the revenue fraction, or claim that they got much less revenue from it then they actually did, then you are shit out of luck.
It’s a well established fact that development interventions have a massively reduced take-up when the price goes from zero to even a small amount. This was a big debate with malaria nets, and the evidence showed that people would dramatically reduce takeup of nets if they had to pay even a negligible amount for them.