The Impact and Targeting of Social Infrastructure Investments: Lessons from the Nicaraguan Social Fund

Menno Pradhan is with the Nutritional Science Department at Cornell University and the Economics Department at Free University in Amsterdam, and Laura B. Rawlings is a Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist in the World Bank’s Latin America and the Caribbean Region. Their e-mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected], respectively. The authors would like to thank the participants in the Nicaraguan Emergency Social Investment Fund (fise) workshop held November 1999 at the World Bank for useful comments, particularly Florencia Castro-Leal, Carlos Lacayo, John Newman, Berk Ozler, Geert Ridder, and Steve Younger. They would also like to thank the team at the fise for guidance and support and the team at the National Statistical Institute in Nicaragua for excellent data collection and processing. Funding for the research was provided by the governments of Nicaragua and Norway and the World Bank. The Impact and Targeting of Social Infrastructure Investments: Lessons from the Nicaraguan Social Fund