ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the use a range of impact evaluation methods to assess the development impact of regional cooperation projects and to attempt to transfer learning from one context to another to design better regional public goods (RPGs) projects. It begins by presenting the Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) Regional Public Goods Initiative because for over a decade it has been one of the largest and most innovative instruments providing support for horizontal regional South-South cooperation in LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean). It shows that, in many instances, countries' policy makers also engage in regional cooperation to reach higher regulatory summits. The chapter explains and discusses these higher regional regulatory summits that policy makers are attempting to make and which have been observed in many IDB-supported RPG projects. It concludes that, after analyzing the project inventory for the IDB RPG Initiative, it is evident that regional standards can be above the national norm, but only in limited circumstances.
