National Solidarity Program
Augmentation of Impact
Evaluation
Abdul Rahman Ayubi, HayatullahFazil, SakhiFrozish,Andrew Beath, Michael
Gilligan
Project description

Community Facilitation
 Mobilization; creation of Community Development
Councils—democratic election of community
representatives etc
 Remobilization; re-election etc

Provision of Block Grant to communities
 First round
 Second round

Implementation & Management Support
 Technical assistance, Monitoring & Evaluation
Motivation

Augmentation of some of the current measures
on local governance and social capital:
 To avoid respondents telling us what they think we
want to hear
 To increase the precision of our measures on local
governance, social cohesion and political attitudes
Research questions

Does NSP improve local governance?

Does NSP promote social cohesion?
Indicators: Question 1
• Trust in local/national government: We will use
the altruism game with different recipients to
measure this indicator.
• Subjects will be asked to contribute to a project for the needy.
Some randomly selected subjects will be asked to contribute to a
project managed by the national government, the local
government and an NGO.
• Perception of CDC head as village leader: We will
use a coordination game to measure subjects’
beliefs about whether CDC is legitimate authority
• Subjects are asked to predict who other subjects will choose as
the leader of the community. They will choose among several
candidates including CDC head and traditional leaders .
Indicators: Question 2

Solidarity: The Altruism game will be used to
measure solidarity within and among
communities.
▪ Subjects will be given a sum of money. They will be
asked to contribute to a project for the needy in their
village. The same process will be used for a project for
the needy in a neighboring village.
Indicators: Question 2

Trust: Trust will be measured by the trust
game within and among communities.
▪ Subjects are given a sum of money. Subjects are then
divided into two groups: senders and receivers. Sender
decide how much of their sum of money to send to the
receiver. We triple that amount and give it to the
receiver. The receiver then decides how much of the
total to return to the sender.
Indicators: Question 2

Obligation of the individual to the
community: We will measure this indicator
with the public goods game.
▪ Subjects are given two choices one of which contributes
money to all of the other subjects and one which offers
money only to himself or herself.
Identification strategy

Randomized control trial: 250 treated and 250
control
Sample

20 persons in each of 100 villages (50
treatment 50 control) chosen randomly from
the survey sample villages
Timeline


First round of game implementation after
second follow-up survey (2011)
Second round of game implementation
(2013)
Impact evaluation team
Gov. Team:
 Nasrullah Ahmadzai
Consultants:
 Sakhi Frozish
 Shahim Ahmad Kabuli
 Andrew Beath
 Fotini Christia
 Ruben Enikolopov
DIME:
 Michael Gilligan
Estimated budget

Approximately $270,000
 $234,000 (NSP)
 $36,000 (DIME)