The effects of the MCC Effect

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Andria Hayes-Birchler, Senior Development Policy Officer

In addition to the obvious role MCC’s scorecards play in selecting MCC’s partner countries, many people have suggested the scorecards provide an incentive for countries to reform policies, strengthen institutions and improve data quality in order to become more competitive for MCC assistance. This is referred to as the “MCC Effect.”

But does the MCC Effect really exist? And if so, how influential is it? Are there circumstances where it may be more or less influential?

Brad Parks and Zach Rice at the College of William and Mary explore these questions in a recently released paper entitled “Measuring the Policy Influence of the Millennium Challenge Corporation: A Survey Based Approach.” Parks and Rice present results of their survey of 640 MCC stakeholders, including foreign government officials, U.S. Government officials, contractors, civil society, and private sector members. For those of you disinclined to read the full 128-page report (although you should!), the authors also published a brief synopsis of their findings.

The good news for MCC? Parks and Rice find evidence to support the idea that the prospect of MCC eligibility has served as an effective incentive for policy reform. In fact, 92 percent of respondents stated that the MCC scorecards had an impact on reform efforts (ranging from “marginal impact to few important reform efforts” to “instrumental to many reform efforts”), and respondents identified 67 governments that undertook reforms to improve performance of their country on at least one of the MCC eligibility indicators.

Here’s what else the report found: The MCC Effect seems to be particularly strong in Threshold Program countries, where 68 percent of respondents from these countries reported that the MCC eligibility criteria were either “central to a few important reform efforts” or “instrumental to many important reform efforts.” Among respondents from compact countries, 64 percent reported that the MCC eligibility criteria were either “central to a few important reform efforts” or “instrumental to many important reform efforts.”

And among respondents from candidate countries—which have never received a single dollar in MCC assistance—41 percent reported that the MCC eligibility criteria were either “central to a few important reform efforts” or “instrumental to many important reform efforts.”

According to the paper, development stakeholders recognize the MCC scorecard as an influential policy assessment. When asked to identify the three most influential external assessments of government performance from a list of 18 options, respondents repeatedly identified the Millennium Challenge Account eligibility criteria and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

MCC is delighted to see such strong indications of the MCC Effect in the survey data. As the Center for Global Development points out, these findings are based on the perceptions of MCC stakeholders and additional work is needed to ground-truth these perceptions. MCC recently released an issue brief on the MCC Effect , which outlines how MCC defines the MCC effect, highlights additional findings from the Parks and Rice survey and lists illustrative examples of the MCC Effect in action.

We welcome additional examples and empirical research on the topic from MCC stakeholders, independent evaluators and academics; please e-mail me to share or request additional information.