Category: Blog

There is a pressing need to distinguish between causes and outcomes in Pakistan’s ongoing power crisis. Power shortages (i.e., a shortfall between peak demand and supply) remain a headline outcome, and one determined by several causes. However, these causes have not received sufficient attention from policymakers, who, in turn, continue to focus on the outcome itself. This has created a situation in which interventions are misplaced, and the structural roots of the crisis stand unaddressed.

Let us briefly look at the causes.

I would envision any well-functioning sector to have an appropriate policy framework as its foundation, adequate funding to build on that foundation, and strong governance to implement and manage its prescriptions. Sadly, Pakistan’s power sector has lacked all three elements, as a result of which the sector has suffered through decades of ad hoc and crisis-driven policy making.

High dependence on imported oil has raised generation costs for power utilities, rendering them unable to recover costs through tariffs. This is partly because the government refused to raise tariffs during 2003 and 2008 when generation costs were rising sharply. Issues of high Transmission and Distribution (T&D) losses, non-payment of bills by consumers and delays in payment (or non-payment) of allocated subsidies have added to the financial fragility of utilities. All of this has resulted in insufficient investments in power infrastructure because of which existing plants have been forced to operate beyond their capacity, thus making them age faster and risking frequent breakdowns. Matters have also been made worse by government’s reluctance to move aggressively with sector reforms, including privatization. Consequently, power shortage has gone up, imposing prolonged power cuts across different types of customers.

But is there a cure-all solution?

Just as multiple issues have caused the problem of power shortage, only multiple solutions can address these issues. One of these solutions can be net metering.

What is net metering?

Usually, electricity flows the grid to the consumer. But this does not mean that it cannot flow in the opposite direction, i.e., from the consumer to the grid. Let me explain how. A consumer can produce her own electricity, typically from rooftop solar installations, and feed it back to the grid. This technical innovation will require that the flow of electricity from the grid to the consumer and from the consumer to the grid are both measured separately and the consumer is billed according to a net tariff, representing the difference between the cost of electricity purchased from the grid and the price of electricity sold back to the grid. Thus net metering represents the net bill for the electricity taken from the grid. In extreme cases, consumers can feed more electricity to the grid than what they take from it, in which case they will be paid by the distribution company for the surplus electricity produced.

Figure 1: How net metering works

Source: raftaar, 2016

National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), which is the national regulator, passed the “Distributed Generation and Net Metering Regulations 2015” in September 2015. This was a significant breakthrough, as today Pakistan is among the 110 countries in the world that have policies for net metering.

Figure 2: Net metering licenses given out by all Distribution Companies (DISCO’s) in Pakistan (2016-2018)

Source: NEPRA

How does it speak to the issues mentioned above?

Net metering is a cost-effective solution because it 1) has low set-up costs and 2) it uses free sunlight for generation. Centralized power plants, on the other hand, require huge investments to set up and depend on expensive oil for power generation. According to recent research by the University of Punjab, the rooftop space available at the Punjab Government Servants Housing Society in Lahore was able to accommodate enough solar panels to produce nine times the amount of electricity needed by the entire housing society. Domestic consumers are about 86 percent of the total electricity consumers in Pakistan, so one could imagine the kind of savings that can be made if net metering was scaled up.

The recent use of smart meters in Pakistan has revealed that longer feeders – wires that transmit electricity from grid stations to consumers – result in higher T&D losses. This is primarily because of bad equipment, poor maintenance and energy theft. Net metering can revolutionize existing power distribution by bringing electricity generation on-site or near-site for consumers. This would drastically reduce T&D losses.

Although net metering may not fully resolve the issue of low recovery rate, it may still be able to yield some improvement. Net metering reduces a consumer’s bill because 1) she uses less electricity from the grid as she is now producing her own and 2) she sells surplus production back to the grid. Reduced bills mean that these consumers are more likely to pay their monthly bills, especially because they are now also expecting payments from the distribution companies (DISCOs).

Way forward

In order to tap the full potential of this technological innovation, there is a need for it to be scaled up across domestic and commercial segments. For this, a partnership will be required between DISCOs (for their on-bill payment network) and commercial banks (for financing for upfront equipment costs). This suggestion is both practical and realizable in Pakistan’s context, e.g., in the gas sector, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) has allowed the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) to finance Solar Water Heaters (SWH’s) utilising its on-bill payment network. Therefore, following its disruptive, positive policy regulation that has allowed net-metering in the country, perhaps NEPRA should next also allow on-bill payment financing schemes for net-metering. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has already set the wheels in motion by announcing a credit facility to finance renewables through commercial banks, so NEPRA will be adding to the momentum. While this will be a good step forward, it will be critical to ensure that only high quality, verified solutions are allowed once a market for this promising technology has been created.

Usman Naeem is a Country Economist at the International Growth Centre (IGC).

Countries across the world are relying on ever-larger amounts of data to inform policy design. Efforts for improving policymaking however call for rethinking the types of data collected, process of collating and organizing it, and eventually integrating it with existing information.

Big data in Pakistan

As Pakistan transitions towards e-governance and evidence-based policymaking, the government is focusing not only on generating new data but also overhauling existing data collection and management systems across the entire spectrum of the government machinery. Some success stories include the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) that now maintains one of the world’s largest citizen’s database based on facial recognition and biometric data. Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Pakistan’s flagship social protection initiative also boasts the country’s most extensive poverty database – an output of the largest and first ever door to door poverty survey. Pakistan has also just concluded its sixth Housing and Population census, which shows the total population exceeding 207 million!

Sub-national governments are also making some progress on this front. The Punjab Board of Information and Technology (PITB) has introduced the use of technology-based interventions to generate real-time data, which help monitor service delivery and inform appropriate policy and its implementation. PBIT is now extending its services to other provinces.

Data for Research

The availability of new information is catalyzing data-driven solutions in the policy realm, while simultaneously helping researchers track progress and gaps in policies and programs. In this process, researchers are assisting in both creating new data and demonstrating efficient ways of using it. Examples of IGC’s initiatives in this regard include its collaboration with the State Bank of Pakistan and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in the roll-out of the Management of Organisational Practices survey (MOPS), appended to the latest round of the Census of Manufacturing Industries (CMI). This is the first extension of MOPs outside of the US. IGC has also supported the digitisation of the census on small and cottage industry in Punjab conducted by Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC), which can now be used for an unprecedented analysis of non-farm economic activity in rural Punjab.

Gaps and Issues in data

Ability to generate and use data effectively, especially in the form of evidence, requires defining what to measure and ensuring quality of what is being measured.

1. Measuring the right indicators

Information needs to be collected in light of its ultimate application so that it addresses the relevant policy questions. In the case of Pakistan, estimates on health and other socio-economic outcomes are not systematically produced, making it difficult to generate evidence about the effectiveness of existing policy, and further discouraging an already weak culture of data use.

The lack of pertinent data is stark. A 2014 study commissioned by IGC tried to determine key factors impacting public health outcomes in Punjab. The analysis, based on two sets of population-based surveys – the Punjab Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 2006 and 2012 and the Punjab Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) of 2008 and 2011, was unable to answer any questions regarding the correlation between various policy inputs and health conditions. Moreover, these surveys contained no information on water sources that could help determine water quality and, hence, its impact on health.

           

2. Accuracy of Data

The relevance of data for decision-making is undermined not just by its absence but also by its inaccuracy. For example, in the Punjab Directory of industries 2016, duplicate firms are treated as different firms and assigned distinct serial numbers, increasing the chances of double counting. In other instances, same industry types are named differently at various places, posing a risk of incorrectly categorizing firms by industry type.

IGC researchers took over two months to clean data collected by Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC). However, since the data has not been entered systematically and consistently through a code, a ‘hammer’ is spelt in at least five different manners – hamer, hamr, hamar, hathora, hathori! Eventually researchers found only 24,000 of the 164,000 observations valid for analysis.

Amidst this anguish some of the entries provide comic relief! In the PSIC data annual revenue of one flour mill (atta chaki) in Koth Addu was more than Rs. 8.7 trillion with a working capital of Rs. 100,000 while the The Pakistan Standard of Living Measurement Survey 2015-16 contains households with multiple household heads many of them aged 10 or younger, with the youngest being a four-year-old!

3. Consistency across data sets

There is a lot of data that already ‘exists’ but not in forms that can be merged. For an IGC project on education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), researchers had to extract data from multiple sources. The monthly data of Independent Monitoring Unit (IMU) does not coincide with the yearly data from Education Management Information System (EMIS). Across both datasets, schools with the same code are reported against different tehsils and circles. Figures in the published copy of the EMIS report also differed from information in the raw data. With the hope that corrective measures will follow, these observations have been shared with KPs Elementary and School Education Department.

In an earlier work, IGC researchers also highlighted the paucity of an integrated socio-economic dataset at the micro-level especially for urban planning. In the absence of a common spatial identifier (such as a mohalla), various datasets cannot be cross-linked. This has resulted in poorly targeted and short-sighted policies for urban Pakistan.

Looking for solutions

Robust data collection systems are needed to efficiently capture and ensure integrity of data, and to ensure they correspond to government’s capacity to utilize the information effectively. While analysis of data has become sophisticated, most data collection remains paper-based, prone to a variety of slipups.

The use of technology such as computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) can make the entire process of data collection, entry and analysis more cost and time efficient. Through CAPI, the interviewer reads the questions to the respondent from the screen of a handheld android-device (usually a phone or a tablet) preloaded with the questionnaire. The responses are immediately entered into the device. Such applications have checks at the backend to ensure data is accurately captured. This eliminates the need for manual re-entering of data and minimises chances of errors. Moreover, this data, which is crypted, is automatically synced and uploaded to a central server and can be viewed only by authorised persons.

Adopting change

Given the gradual shift towards data-based policymaking and monitoring, technology-driven solutions are now becoming essential. For an on-going education project in KP, IGC researchers have used Census and Surveying Processing System (CSPro) – a software free to download and use and barring the one-time cost of android-based devices, use of this not only saved time and money but also ensured integrity and reliability of data. Encouragingly, government statisticians in Pakistan are gradually catching onto this trend. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and Bureau of Statistics in Punjab now use CSPro, while the BISP has also made a shift from paper based to computer aided interviewing for updating the country’s poverty database. These nascent trends need to be built upon at both the national and sub-national level in order to improve the knowledge base, and thus efficacy, of policy design and implementation.

 

Hina Shaikh is the Country Economist at the International Growth Centre (IGC).

Attique-ur-Rehman is a Research Associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

A recent seminar organized by the International Growth Centre (IGC), in collaboration with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan Business Council (PBC) and Institute of Business Administration (IBA), brought together key stakeholders from the spheres of knowledge creation and policy formulation. The purpose of this gathering was to build bridges between academia, government, and industry leaders for developing and influencing locally-rooted policies for industrial development.

IGC provides an annual budget to each of its 15 member countries to carry out innovative and high-impact policy research. In Pakistan, IGC has helped create a dissemination platform called the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR), which provides an integral link between researchers and policymakers. Collectively, IGC and CDPR have successfully engaged with policymakers in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) via a number of completed and on-going research projects. Through a collaboration with SBP, these organizations are now expanding their advisory and evaluation support engagements with government policymakers and other stakeholders in Sindh as well.

Bridging the gap between research and policymaking

IGC’s recently concluded seminar in Karachi provided important insights in how research work can engage with policymaking in key areas of economic development. Ehsan Chaudhri (Carleton University) presented a study carried out with SBP members on forecasting and policy analysis and the role of government and external sectors. This study explained the Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model which would help in forecasting key macroeconomic variables and enable accurate policymaking.

A study presented by Abdullah Tahir (SBP) on robust quarterisation of GDP and determination of business cycles for IGC partner countries revealed that gathering and utilizing quarterly GDP data, as compared to annual data, is more accurate, timely, and comprehensive and provides real time data on business cycles. This can be leveraged as a policy tool to help smoothen business cycle crests and troughs.

These models lie at the core of State Bank’s independent monetary policy. It has been used as a guideline during monetary policy decision making processes. Saeed Ahmed (Chief Economist SBP) asserted that through these results, SBP helps provide firms a nurturing macroeconomic ecosystem, which in turn also helps firms estimate their future returns.

In a study by Ali Choudhary (SBP) in collaboration with Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on management and organizational practices of firms across Punjab, Punjab’s firms are only half as advanced as US firms in terms of management practices. This negatively impacts their performance. Aliyah H. Khan (Professor, Quaid-e-Azam University) contended that firm management is an umbrella that pushes or enables production. For this purpose, this project is going to be scaled-up to other provinces, including Sindh. However, Asif Bajwa (former Chief Statistician, PBS) believes that the Sindh government is reluctant to allow this research to be conducted in the province.

Dr. Syed Hasan(LUMS) and Usman Khan’s (LUMS) study on Punjab’s rural, non-farm economic activity gathered and digitized data on the informal economy in all categories of economic activity, excluding manufacturing, for which data already existed. This research served to fill a data gap to benefit researchers and policymakers. Carrying this study forward, the total factor productivity (TFP) for Punjab’s small and cottage industries was identified. It was shown that in areas with high incidence of poverty, firm productivity was also low. Constraints to Punjab’s small manufacturers included input costs, access to energy, credit, and markets, and governance issues, such as corruption, and high taxes. Sindh’s rural development can be mapped along the same categories of economic activity to help strengthen public policy in this area.

Pakistan’s garments industries: key challenges and opportunities

Studies presented by Dr. Turab Hussain (LUMS) and Dr. Ijaz Nabi (Country Director, IGC) shed light on Pakistan’s garments sector – the highest contributing sector to exports. It was revealed that Pakistan’s garments fare poorly in global markets. Pakistan’s share in world markets is minimal in high-end products thereby garnering low demand and low revenues. They proposed that garments have tremendous potential for creating jobs and generating exports for Pakistan, but must take advantage of its lower labour costs compared to China, which is looking for investment opportunities worldwide through relocation. Furthermore, 1% of reduction in China’s exports could lead to 8% employment generation in Pakistan. However, without regulating its overvalued exchange rate in lieu of depreciating currencies of competitors, Pakistan’s manufactures would remain uncompetitive, especially in conjunction with the energy constraint that the industry faces.

Asma Khalid (SBP) postured that dwindling garment export revenues can be improved by reducing the focus on product diversity and instead focusing on carrying the product through all the production phases till the end product. This will add value to the products and earn higher revenues.  It has become crucial for Pakistan to begin importing yarn instead of cotton, which is less expensive than its domestic production. Also, transitioning to the production of artificial or technical fibers is critical for securing larger market shares worldwide as demand for cotton is dwindling.

Creating a supportive environment for Pakistani firms and boosting exports

It was mentioned by Ehsan Malik (CEO, PBC) that the extant tax burden on manufacturers – estimated at 58% of total collection – encumbers productivity, as well as harms the country’s balance of payments and overall employment creation. Import substitution is necessary to strengthen the domestic market as the market has been flooded by imported consumption goods. Furthermore, the trade deficit with China has increased five-fold in recent years due to the discouraging tax policy on exports.

Above all, Pakistani firms lack key competitiveness in exports with regional counterparts. Atif Bajwa (former CEO, Bank Alfalah) considered that the cost of inputs, poor management practices and low human development capital, as well as inconsistent government policies are key hurdles. Domestic private sector investors are needed at a large scale to achieve sustainable growth through involvement in policy making, particularly to boost SME’s. The commercial banking sector, particularly infrastructure banks, need to be geared to sustain long-run firm growth.

Saeed Ahmad (Senior Research Fellow, Collective for Social Science), advised SBP that it holds the mandate of the public therefore must also focus on employment, fiscal and tax policies, instead of advancing its inflation targeted monetary policy. Aliyah Khan and Asad Saeed in separate panels established that innovation and technological upgradation through stakeholder collaborations based on current and future research can be used as blueprints for designing resilient pro-growth economic policies for Pakistani firms. According to Waqar Wadho’s research (Lahore School of Economics), technological upgrades and product innovation should be accompanied by process or organizational innovations in firms so that the labour force stays abreast of new production techniques and does not lose its productivity.

Finally, Hasaan Khawar, (Fellow CDPR and independent researcher) contended that firms would be able to leverage opportunities brought by CPEC depending on the commercial viability of individual projects, state’s capability to identify and support winner industries, and whether domestic firms would be able to withstand added competition.

 

Sharmin Arif is the Communications Assistant at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

Since 2013, the issue of governance reforms in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have generated considerable discussion, and the future status of FATA itself remains a central tenet of this conversation. While earlier a consensus around FATA’s merger with the neighboring province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) appeared to be forming, further debate since then has generated the alternative view of establishing a separate province or territory. The argument for the alternate view is grounded in apprehensions of becoming a backwater territory of KP, and having its designated funds diverted towards Peshawar and other central KP districts that are looking to compete with cities elsewhere in Pakistan. Unfortunately, lost in this broader debate is the impetus to move forward with reforming the administrative system in FATA, which everyone agrees needs amending.

In the midst of these opposing positions, all other agenda points on the reforms platform have been put on the back burner and the people of FATA have had to contend with a persistently inefficient governance system. In terms of funds utilization for development, this year has been particularly abysmal: As of 22^nd February 2018 the total utilization of FATA’s Annual Development Programme (ADP) has been a mere PKR 5.8 billion out of the total outlay of PKR 24.5 billion development. This is especially alarming given that FATA does not get its share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, which according to the latest FATA Reforms Committee was recommended to be at least 3 percent, i.e. about an estimated PKR 90 billion. So FATA is already given a mere fraction of what it should actually be receiving in development funds, and is failing to utilize even that fraction. Consequently, there are fears that this low utilization rate might lead the federal government to impose budgetary cuts of around 10 billion.

Over the years Pakistan has struggled to effectively reform its administrative setup or successfully institute a functioning local government system. Fortunately, FATA is ripe to take the lead in both these areas. Currently, FATA’s administrative staff in its Secretariat is deputed from the KP government. Given the inefficient performance of the Secretariat and the broader motivation to overhaul the system in FATA, there is a perfect opportunity to instill a system whereby qualified experienced professionals can be hired to lead the various departments at the secretariat level. For example, the directorate of health can be headed by an experienced public health specialist or someone with decades of experience as a health practitioner in the healthcare industry in the country. Similarly, an actual economist and statistician can be hired in the positions of chief economist and chief statistician respectively. A finance specialist or qualified accountant can be hired to head the finance department and a similar staffing criterion can be replicated with high impact in other departments. The world has long moved beyond a misplaced reliance on generalists, who head the education department one day and find themselves in charge of mineral development the next.

Furthermore, FATA has burgeoning educated youth in every field that is increasingly becoming frustrated with the lack of employment opportunities for them in their own government. This underutilized labor force also encounters a labor market with little to no economic activity in their own areas following the devastation caused by a decade of insurgent conflict and military operations. Therefore, the public sector will remain the main employer till economic conditions improve further. With the KP staff returning to their parent departments, this will give the opportunity for motivated FATA youth to be employed and feel invested in contributing towards the development of their area.

Similarly, the introduction of an empowered local government system is crucial. This will make locals active participants in the development of the region and help improve the abysmal disbursement rate of development funds by devolving spending decisions and implementation channels. It will also help mitigate the vulnerability being felt by locals in a positive manner, and reduce the risk of destabilization in the delicate stability in the region, achieved after a hard fought military operation. Given the centuries of local decision making through local jirgas in FATA, the implementation of an effective local government system is likely to be more successful in FATA than what has been achieved in other provinces.

In these challenging times for FATA, there is a rare opportunity for the region to achieve something the rest of Pakistan has been striving for: a chance for true inclusive indigenous development. It is imperative that the conversation move forward from controversial debates around the status of FATA and towards the genuine reforms that can transform the region and position it to be an active participant in the development of Pakistan.

Ghazan Jamal is a Country Economist at the International Growth Centre (IGC).

Contemporary models of governance work under the assumption that when research evidence is presented to policymakers, it immediately becomes part of their decision-making processes, and ultimately leads to evidence-based policymaking. But where is the proof to back such a linear process of evidence incorporation in policymaking? In reality, policymakers are constrained by a range of factors, and the assumption that they update preferences and decisions based on new evidence does not always hold. More often than not, their constraints and biases effect how evidence is both interpreted and how it eventually informs policy.

Recently, the Consortium for Development Policy Research convened a panel of two researchers and one policymaker to discuss how and when policymakers take up evidence presented to them.

Do policymakers use evidence

Taking up this broader question, Asad Liaqat, PhD candidate at Harvard, presented the findings of a recent study on civil servants in India and Pakistan that confirms policymakers do not always use or understand the evidence provided to them. The underlying cause in this instance was a lack of understanding of the data itself. For example, a question posed to civil servants in both countries asked them to assess the district with the highest absolute number of unemployed people. However, in terms of data they were only given a percentage figure for unemployment by district. Worryingly, only 13.5 percent of Pakistan’s middle cadre civil servants provided the correct response (i.e. the data given was insufficient to provide an answer to the question), compared to a much higher 72.2 percent from a comparable Indian cadre.

Asad further added that researchers assume policymakers are universally more likely to take up a proposed reform if backed by hard evidence (i.e. based on robust statistical methods), as opposed to anecdotal or soft evidence.  However, he showed that, for some sectors, anecdotal evidence was more convincing for policymakers. An example cited was when school monitoring was proposed to reduce teacher absenteeism, policymakers were more likely to base their decision on views of parents, presented in narrative form, as opposed to the results of a scientific impact evaluation study.

Moreover, even when data is accurately interpreted, it is not always put to use, particularly when quick decisions have to be made and there is limited allowance for detailed analysis.  This is acutely felt in instances where evidence supports a risky reform but reward structures for policymakers promote risk averseness.

Inherent biases

In an ideal world, politicians and bureaucrats would have no pre-determined worldview that may lead to incorrect conclusions and would only make impartial decisions based on evidence. However, behavioral science shows decision-makers are influenced by inherent biases in their thought process, which impacts how they interpret evidence. While there can be multiple types of biases, Sheheryar Banuri, Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, sheds attention on the most common one – confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is “the tendency to seek out information that confirms one’s prior beliefs” (Nickerson 1998). Banuri shared results of an experiment, where officials from the World Bank and Department of International Development (DFID) were asked to objectively interpret some data provided to them. Where the context of data presented was neutral, 65 percent arrived at the accurate answer. However, when the same evidence was presented to support strong pre-existing notions, only 45 percent answered correctly. Thus, errors in judgment became amplified when views on an issue with strong preconceived notions were sought. For example, those who stated strong preferences against income inequality were more likely to make errors when presented with findings that went against their beliefs.

Can such biases be mitigated?

It would be unnatural to assume that policymakers are not influenced by the narrative around them.  Therefore, it is worth investing in solutions that mitigate the effect of such biases and aid in impartiality.

One remedial measure presented by Sheheryar was the use of deliberation.  In the experiment, when policymakers were asked to undertake a problem in pairs, they were more likely to respond with the correct answer, relative to when they undertook the task individually. Hence, avenues of more open discussion by bureaucrats and politicians on available evidence may yield a higher chance of designing and implementing unbiased reforms.

Moreover, independent peer reviews are another tool now increasingly being used at organizations such as the World Bank and DFID, to support the policymaking process.

Policymaker’s perspective

Salman Siddique, former federal secretary, responded to the research findings given his own experience and understanding of the bureaucracy and the government’s decision-making processes. In the context of Pakistan, where political hierarchy is such that the final authority rests with the senior most bureaucrat or politician, peer reviews challenge the existing power dynamics. A policymaker’s individual political and self-interest is most likely to determine the decision he makes.

It is not always the case that policy-makers are unwilling to use evidence. They are often unable to do so due to institutional constraints. The existing institutional setup can hinder implementation of policies that go against the current direction of thinking, even if the evidence points elsewhere. And while researchers are keen to work on providing more data and evidence, they are less inclined towards resolving the willingness to use evidence.

One solution would be for academics to engage more actively with policymakers in the design of their interventions to build ownership. This is a practice that the International Growth Centre actively pursues. Researchers may also need to package the evidence in a way that has more impact such as using a hybrid of soft and hard evidence. They could also try and target one anchor in the government that can be a champion for reform.

While the first step would be for policymakers to recognize their own internal biases, academics must also acknowledge the same when presenting evidence or conducting their research. It is only then, that measures such as enhanced deliberation or other solutions can have meaningful impact.

Zara Salman is a Senior Research Associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

References

Nickerson, R S (1998), “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises”, Review of General Psychology 2(2): 175.