Aspectos institucionales para potenciar la evaluación social de proyectos en transporte: lecciones de América Latina

Abstract

This paper presents a discussion on the institutional safeguards that can be adopted to boost the use of cost-benefit analysis as an instrument to improve resource allocation in the economy. This discussion is based on the experience of Latin America, in particular the case of Chile and its National Investment System. Among the highlighted elements is the separation between project proponent and evaluating agency, and a strong normative base that includes procedures and methodologies for project evaluation. A preliminary evaluation is undertaken of the effectiveness of national investment systems to improve allocation of public funds. In the case of Chile, the available evidence indicates that the system has had a positive impact, although the system could be improved by a better feedback of ex-ante evaluation from ex-post evaluations and by assigning the supervision and evaluation of the system to an independent body.