In search of evidence on the impact of such trade interventions, we conducted a thorough review of the evaluation methods for 85 World Bank trade-related investment lending projects undertaken during the 1995–2005 period. The source of data was the World Bank’s Operations portal website and in particular the Project Appraisal Documents (PADs) and the Implementation Completion Reports (ICRs).<sup>19</sup> The evaluation methods used can be classified into five distinct categories: (a) only economic or financial internal rates of return, net present value or effectiveness calculations; (b) beneficiary surveys and stakeholder workshops; (c) both a and b, (d) both a and b, with a comparison of beneficiaries to a control group; and (e) no formal evaluation methods used.<sup>20</sup> One key aspect to note is that the implementation of a beneficiary survey does not guarantee that a rigorous impact evaluation can be conducted since in most cases the survey covers only outcomes pertaining to beneficiaries of the project, and no control group is covered (more details on these methods will be provided in section 4).

Figure 3 shows that evaluation using only economic or financial rates of return was the most commonly used method for the trade-related projects, while 10 percent of the projects involved no formal evaluation method.<sup>21</sup> Included in the latter category is a trade competitiveness project that described the impact of the project in purely subjective terms: ―While the impact on the firms assisted had not yet been determined, a visit to two beneficiaries by a supervision mission confirmed that there had been an impressive impact on the firms' quality of products and skills.‖ Another example of the latter is a trade competitiveness project where the achievement of the overall goal was measured in terms of the higher average annual growth rate of exports during the project duration and increases in exports' share of GDP compared with the initial year of the project.

Figure 3 Evaluation of World Bank trade-related projects 1995–2005

> 19 We thank Vivian Agbhega for compiling the data for this review. The selection of trade-related projects followed the criteria used by Steven Gunawan in an unpublished study of "Monitoring and Evaluation Lessons of Trade Projects" that served as background work for the 2011 World Bank Trade Strategy. The projects were filtered from the World Bank’s Operations portal website according to the theme ―Trade and Integration," and falling within the following criteria: i) approved only after 1995 due to obsolescence; ii) IBRD/IDA-funded; and iii) closed. A total of 321 projects were filtered, out of which 144 were development policy loans and 177 were investment loans, and 30 investment lending projects had to be dropped since they lacked ICRs. A final set of 85 investment lending projects was obtained after excluding projects that did not have any trade components. The main documents used to extract information on the projects were PADs and ICRs. For each project we collected information on the types of intervention, the types of outputs and outcomes achieved, the evaluation methods employed, and the evidence or proof of causation of the impact of the project.

> 20 A beneficiary survey consists of a formal survey of the entities that received assistance from the project, whereas a stakeholder workshop is a more informal way to collect information on the various entities affected by the project.

> 21 Our analysis of project ICRs did reveal, however, that the use of these methods is often handicapped by difficulty in quantifying some of the costs and benefits of the project. Some project ICRs explicitly say that certain benefits are not incorporated in net present value calculations due to their complexity.

14