Scholarship on the administration of international organizations (IOs) has extensively discussed how autonomy influences their performance. While some argue that autonomy increases performance through greater adaptability, others warn that it may increase the risk of agency slack. Authors typically distinguish between three types of performance: output, outcome, and impact performance. We focus on core funding as a key source of IO autonomy and argue that projects with more core funding show decreased output performance but an increased outcome and impact performance. Our empirical analysis relies on results from data on up to 3590 development projects run by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 128 recipient countries between 2004 and 2020. Subsequently, we test the impact of more core funding on project volumes (output performance), objectives achieved in individual projects (outcome performance), and their effects on sub‐national human development in project regions (impact performance). Our findings suggest that, although reliance on core resources is associated with lower output performance (less funding), it may result in stronger outcome and impact performance, as reflected by more objectives achieved and a higher sub‐national HDI where UNDP projects are implemented. Our findings have important implications for debates on the effectiveness of global governance.

中文翻译：

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核心资金与国际组织绩效：来自联合国开发计划署项目的证据


关于国际组织 （IO） 管理的学术研究广泛讨论了自治如何影响其绩效。虽然一些人认为自主性通过更大的适应性来提高性能，但其他人警告说，这可能会增加代理松弛的风险。作者通常区分三种类型的绩效：产出、成果和影响绩效。我们专注于核心资金作为 IO 自主性的关键来源，并认为拥有更多核心资金的项目显示出产出绩效下降，但结果和影响绩效增加。我们的实证分析依赖于 2004 年至 2020 年间联合国开发计划署 （UNDP） 在 128 个受援国开展的多达 3590 个开发项目的数据结果。随后，我们测试了更多核心资金对项目量（产出绩效）、单个项目实现的目标（成果绩效）的影响，以及它们对项目区域地方人类发展的影响（影响绩效）。我们的研究结果表明，尽管对核心资源的依赖与较低的产出绩效（较少的资金）有关，但它可能会导致更强的结果和影响绩效，这反映在实现更多目标和实施联合国开发计划署项目的地方国家以下地区更高的 HDI。我们的研究结果对关于全球治理有效性的辩论具有重要意义。