经济学人:资助慈善事业:高成本发展影响力债券的利与弊(2)

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　　Instead of having to send tedious reports to a donor¹ about how she was spending money, she concentrated on solving problems. 她没有像捐赠者发送冗长的报告报道她如何利用这笔钱，她只是专注于解决问题。

　　Educate Girls found, for example, that many pupils could not do long division 例如，‘女孩教育行动’发现很多学生不会做长除法

　　because they did not understand the concept of place value. So its workers taught remedial classes. 因为他们不理解位值的概念。因此，该机构的工作人员开设了辅导班。

　　IDinsight, the independent assessor, found that the main boost to children's test scores came in the third year of the programme, when Educate Girls hit its stride. 独立评估方IDinsight发现这些孩子考试成绩的主要提升出现在该项目的第三年，那时‘女孩教育行动’也步入正轨。

　　Creating the development-impact bond was also complicated and time-consuming. 创立发展影响力债券既复杂又耗时。

　　Staff from several organisations spent months pinning down what Educate Girls would aim to achieve, 来自几个不同组织的员工花了几个月敲定‘女孩教育行动’的目标、

　　how progress would be measured and what would be repaid. Outside experts were drafted in. 如何测量项目进展以及该项目可获得的回报。该项目也招募了外部专家。

　　The randomised controlled trial that IDinsight used to assess the teaching was, like many such trials, neither simple nor cheap. IDinsight用于评估教学的随机对照实验和大多数试验一样，复杂却成本高。

　　More development-impact bonds are now under way or under discussion, 现在有更多的发展影响力债券正在进行或正在讨论之中，

　　some involving big donors² like the World Bank, USAID and DfID (America's and Britain's aid agencies). 其中一些大型投资方有世界银行、美国国际开发署以及英国国际发展署（美英两国的援助组织）。

　　But they will probably remain infrequent oddities in the aid landscape. 但是发展影响力债券可能将成为援助领域中罕见的怪异。

　　Not only are they complex, ponderous³ and costly⁴; they also offer small returns to investors⁵. 发展影响力债券不仅复杂、呆板且昂贵，它们能够给予投资者的回报也很小。

　　And, as Emily Gustafsson-Wright of Brookings points out, no one can yet say for certain that they are better than other ways of delivering aid. 正如布鲁金斯的Emily Gustafsson-Wright所指出的那样，目前没人确保发展影响力债券比其他施以援助的方法更好。

　　They are useful, even so. The problem with much aid (and social spending in general) is that inputs⁶ are scrutinised more closely than results. 虽然如此，它们也是有益的。大量援助（以及社会支出）的问题在于：对于投入的审查比成果更加严格。

　　Experimenting during a project is hard or impossible. 在项目过程中进行尝试要么难以实现，要么根本不可能实现。

　　It would be good if development-impact bonds teach donors to give charities freer rein⁷ and to focus on outcomes. 如果发展影响力债券教会捐赠者赋予慈善机构更加自由的控制权并专注于成果，那么这不失为一件好事。

　　Rajasthani girls are not the only people with lessons to learn. 拉贾斯坦邦的女孩们并不是唯一需要吸取经验教训的人。

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