Adding to the findings of the effects of economic instability, Chauvet et al. (2010) explore the extent to which post-civil war situations shape the outcomes of World Bank projects. Unsurprisingly, they find that projects that start in a post-war period have lower chances of success than projects implemented in countries at peace. Caselli and Presbitero (2021) expand on these results using a larger data set of aid projects funded by seven donors over 1980-2012, documenting that a project implemented in a fragile state is eight percentage points less likely to succeed than a similar project in a non-fragile developing country.

There is some suggestive evidence that geopolitical context influences disbursement patterns, project design, and evaluation at the World Bank. Projects in geopolitically important countries have less stringent conditions (Clark and Dolan, 2021), shorter preparation periods (Kilby, 2013), and are disbursed faster (Kilby, 2013; Kersting and Kilby, 2016). Dreher et al. (2013) find no significant average effect of political influence on the likelihood of a successful project evaluation, but some evidence that politics affect project performance in exceptional cases of high political stakes and challenging economic circumstances.

Regarding the overall degree that country factors explain variation in project success, several papers have addressed the relative importance of project and country-level factors in explaining outcomes. Denizer et al. (2013) report that 80% of the variation in World Bank project outcomes occurs within countries, similar to the 75%-90% obtained by Bulman et al. (2017) for both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Using the same method to examine projects by the Australian aid agency (Wood et al., 2020) and seven diverse donors (Briggs, 2020) produced consistent findings that development project success varies more within countries than across countries.

# **3. Data and methods: What is our empirical approach?**

We combine data on World Bank project outcomes from the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) with a new data set derived from project preparation documents and internal staff records to assess the contribution of project design and management, as well as other relevant factors, to development effectiveness. Specifically, we ask to what extent observed variations in project quality are associated with: (i) factors related to the selection and retention of key staff and managers of staff; and (ii) other project design and supervision factors that are within the World Bank’s control.

We draw on hitherto unexploited administrative data to assess the relation of other previously unobserved aspects of the project production function on outcome ratings. Specifically, we examine the contributions of the TTLs who either prepared or supervised the project, the Practice Manager<sup>7</sup> (PM) who oversaw project development, and the Country Director (CD) responsible for the country program within which the project was set. TTLs design and supervise Bank projects in collaboration with the client government; PMs make decisions on staffing and clear all aspects of project preparation and subsequent implementation; CDs shape the overall dialogue with the country and chair the meetings that finalize project design. For each individual staff in our data, we then use internal staff records to gather key staff characteristics. We also assess the influence of aspects of project design that the literature has identified as relevant, such as complexity and the clarity of project results frameworks.

> 7 This role has been titled differently over time at the World Bank, for this study we use the current title of Practice Manager and draw equivalency with previous titles Sector Manager and Division Chief.

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