Marie Gaarder

Marie Gaarder
Designation: Executive Director, 3ie
Marie Gaarder is the executive director of 3ie, leading the organisation’s efforts to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries by supporting the generation and effective use of high-quality and relevant evidence to inform decision-making.

Blogs by author

15 years after "Will we ever learn?": Well, did we?

Fifteen years ago, the Evaluation Gap Working Group published a report noting the absence of solid evidence on the effectiveness of development programming. This report, and the intellectual community behind it, drove a wave of work on impact evaluations in the development sector. So, did we learn?

2020 Hindsight: A year of what the evidence has taught us

A little less than a year ago, at the start of what has become an infamous year, we launched a yearlong social media campaign called ‘2020 Hindsight: What Works in Development.’

Message from our executive director

3ie’s executive director Marie Gaarder takes stock of the last few months as head of 3ie. She reflects on some of the challenges, opportunities and measures that 3ie is taking to respond to the complexities facing us all today.

Launching a campaign- 2020 hindsight: what works in development?

Today we are launching, at 3ie, a yearlong social media campaign called ‘2020 Hindsight: What Works in Development.’ For our non-American readership, let me briefly explain where the idiom ‘Hindsight is 20/20’ comes from. 20/20 vision is a term used to express that you can see clearly at 20 feet what should normally be seen at that distance.

External validity: policy demand is there but research needs to boost supply

A randomised controlled trial (RCT) in a Northern district of Uganda finds that the young adults who receive cash transfers use it to buy more food for their families, football shirts, and airtime for their mobile phones, compared to those in control areas. Would the pattern be the same if young adults in central Uganda are given cash transfers? Would the findings replicate if the cash transfers were given to young women in Senegal? This stylised example points to the crucial question of generalisability of program impacts to other contexts – commonly referred to as external validity.