Social Impact Bonds and Social Innovation: Benefits and Weaknesses

Abstract

SIBs are spreading across the globe and have been gathering governments’ attention and public authorities, social service providers, scholars, and evaluators, among other stakeholders, in the last few years. Similarly, SIBs have resulted in debates always controversial about matters such as the delivery of social services and the aim of attaining efficiency in doing so, the risk transfer from the public to the private sector and what it means for social service providers, the ability to track and evaluate ideal results, and the increasingly widespread urge to invest in preventive solutions with higher profits in the long term. In recent global meetings, several such debates have recently been displayed in international conferences with stakeholders discussing SIBs ’ ben efits and weaknesses. Notably, SIBs tend to have both strong opponents and proponents. A common thing about them, however, is the need for more proof to evaluate their capacity in an informed manner. This work reviews the recent literature on the subject in order to provide a further contribution to this debate.