The evaluation examines impacts of the Transportation Project in three ways. First, we calculate economic rates of return associated with reduced user costs for each rehabilitated road - and for the project in aggregate - making use of the before and after measures of road use, detailed data on project implementation and costs, and models that project changes in usage, costs, and benefits over time.

We also examine changes in the availability and cost of common consumption goods that can be attributed to the transportation project. This component of the analysis relies on a survey of retail establishments that targets goods in the Cansta Basica or basic basket that is used in Nicaragua to track consumer prices. Data was collected both before and after construction in communities both on and away from rehabilitated roads. The survey design therefore facilitates measurement of changes in price and availability of goods relative to a relevant comparison group.

The evaluation also examines changes in household consumption using a similar pre- and post- rehabilitation data collection methodology. The consumption measures for this component of the evaluation are derived from responses to household surveys implemented for the Rural Business Development (RBD) portion of the Nicaragua compact. While the bulk of the respondents to this survey are outside the zone of influence of the road rehabilitation, we identify more than one-hundred households within the zone of influence of the rehabilitated roads. It is important to recognize that the data for this component of the report was collected for a different purpose and respondents are not a representative sample of households in the treatment and control areas. Thus these results are intended to be suggestive and provide some insight on the robustness of results from the survey of retail establishments. These surveys do not provide unbiased estimates of the transportation project on the affected population.