Methodology
Andhra Pradesh Priorities is a research and advocacy project that is part of the larger India Consensus – a partnership between Tata Trusts and the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Andhra Pradesh Priorities will analyze investments to establish how to achieve the most social, environmental and economic good for Andhra Pradesh for every rupee spent.
This project involves hundreds of sector experts, many months of research, and engagement with decision-makers on the most incisive development approaches for Andhra Pradesh.
Sourcing Ideas and Solutions
Andhra Pradesh Priorities uses the Copenhagen Consensus approach, refined over the past ten years to improve global and regional spending priorities.
During 2017 we engaged with more than 200 sector experts across Andhra Pradesh through a series of 15 sector expert consultations. The sector experts were from the government, donors, academia, NGOs, and think tanks. These consultations created a rare opportunity to extract an in-depth and nuanced overview of the challenges facing Andhra Pradesh. These consultations resulted in over 600 policy interventions, from health, education and food security to clean water access, environmental preservation, climate change, and infrastructure. The ideas from these discussions were added to the pool of research topics. The proposed interventions were then shortlisted and reviewed by the Andhra Pradesh Academic Advisory Committee, who agreed on a final list of 85 interventions to be researched and evaluated using cost-benefit analysis.
Conducting Economic Research
Top economists from Andhra Pradesh and India were commissioned to undertake cost-benefit analysis on the shortlist of interventions. Assumptions were standardized to allow for comparison between different interventions, across all topic areas.
The economists use the standard and most recent data sets in the respective areas/themes for the analysis; Census, NSSO, National Family Health Survey, Reports and other data sets compiled by various Union Ministries, State Government Departments, and associated agencies.
Feedback and peer review are embedded into the research process, to capture a broad range of expert perspectives. There is a rigorous academic peer review process, and first draft papers are also shared with sector and policy experts for their input.
The feedback is incorporated into the final cost-benefit papers. Sector experts are then invited to provide commentaries alongside the final papers.
All papers and comments will be publicly available on our website.
Assessing the Smartest Interventions
An Eminent Panel of Nobel Laureates and leading Andhra Pradesh economists will read all of the papers, and listen to presentations about them at an event in Andhra Pradesh in 2018.
They will rank all of the interventions and establish what would do the most good for every rupee spent.