Tara Kaul

Tara
Designation: Former Evaluation Specialist, 3ie
Tara Kaul formerly reviewed research and managed 3ie-funded impact evaluation grants.

Tara is a development economist and holds a doctorate in Economics from the University of Maryland, USA. She has a masters in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a bachelors in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. Her research interests are in the area of development economics and public economics.

Tara's current research focuses on the nutritional impact of food subsidies, and intra-household gender discrimination in educational expenditures in India.

Blogs by author

Putting government in the driver’s seat to generate and use impact evaluations in the Philippines

Impact evaluations are sometimes criticised for being supply-driven. It is hard to know for sure. There is no counterfactual to what would have happened without the impact evaluation. Regardless of whether this is true or not, one of the ways to ensure that an impact evaluation is more demand-driven is to put the government in the driver’s seat for increasing the demand for evaluation.

Too difficult, too disruptive and too slow? Innovative approaches to common challenges in conducting humanitarian impact evaluations

Over 200 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance across the world today.  In 2017, the UN-coordinated appeals reported a shortfall of 41 per cent, despite receiving a record amount of funding. As the demands on these limited funds increase, there is a concurrent increase in the need for high-quality evidence on the most effective ways to improve humanitarian programming.

Using evidence to rebuild lives

International humanitarian assistance reached a record high in 2014, with global contributions totalling US$24.5 billion,almost a 19 per cent increase since 2013.However, this isn’t good news for the sector as the demand for humanitarian assistance continues to outstrip supply. Humanitarian financing is now fraught with new challenges as the nature and number of emergencies that come under the realm of humanitarian action is constantly changing.