PhD Project
Impacts of Irrigational Infrastructure Investment Interventions on Agricultural Households: A Theory-based Impact Evaluation of Irrigation Systems Rehabilitation Project in Bago Region, Myanmar
Against the contextual background of political and economic liberalization processes that commenced in 2011, Myanmar is becoming one of the top recipients of official development assistance (ODA), and the elected civil government has also been allocating rising volume of the budget to the delivery of public goods and services, thereby resulting in the implementation of increasing portfolio of development projects and programs. Notwithstanding this scenario, systematic and objective examination and assessment of the impacts of these publicly-funded development interventions remains significantly limited, and robust and rigorous impact evaluation studies in Myanmar are hardly observed and rarely publicly available. This study thus aims at investigating, identifying and measuring the impacts of the ODA-funded Irrigation Systems Rehabilitation Project implemented in Bago Region of Myanmar on the socio-economic welfare, particularly on the income, of the agricultural households from the perspectives of the beneficiary farmers as well as at generating a scholarly contribution to addressing the global gap of rigorous impact evaluation studies of development interventions. With a view to addressing not only finding out “what works and what doesn’t” but also identifying “why”, a theory-based impact evaluation approach is selected to be undertaken, employing the Productivity Method as the theoretical and conceptual framework. This study also seeks to contribute to filling the extreme gap of academic literature on robust impact evaluation of the projects implemented in Myanmar, as well as to facilitate making evidence-based decisions on projects, programs or policies so that the development interventions will maximize the generation of optimal benefits and results.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Löwenstein
