Torsten Figueiredo Walter
Torsten Figueiredo Walter is Assistant Professor of Economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. His primary field of expertise is development and his research focuses on the provision of public services in low- and middle-income countries.
Content by Torsten Figueiredo Walter
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Project
Complementarities in the provision of public services: Evidence from Zambia
How can limited resources be employed most efficiently for the sake of development? In its National Development Plan, the Government of Zambia strives to establish an integrated approach to national development that coordinates development across sectors. This, however, requires understanding synergies in the provision of public services across sectors. While the effects...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Complementarities in the provision of public services: Evidence from Zambia
This study seeks to understand how the construction of new health facilities affects population health, focusing on health outcomes related to obstetric care and child mortality when the first facility is established in a local area. Researchers built a new geo-referenced panel data set containing the universe of health facilities in Zambia by combining health...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Agro-dealer and farmer COVID-19 survey: April – June 2020
The researchers interviewed 973 crop farmers, 99 dairy farmers, and 483 agro-dealers to help assess the impacts of COVID-19 on smallholder farmers and other actors across the agricultural value chain. The researchers make several findings, including that a majority of farmers report financial distress and agro-dealers were seeing lower footfall traffic. However,...
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Project
Economic impacts of COVID-19 on smallholder farmers and the agricultural value chain in Kenya
Social distancing protocols present economic and health risks to the rural poor in developing countries. These include: food shortages distortions in food and input prices disruption in the availability of inputs high levels of unemployment In Kenya, COVID-19 has restricted both human movement and trade. The Kenyan Government's concern is that enforced...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Teacher gender and the gender gap in education: The case of Mozambique primary schools
Mozambique is characterised by a substantial gender gap in education and male dominance in the teaching profession. This study investigates the relationship between the relative lack of female teachers and the gender gap in education across the universe of Mozambican schools. Using data from the annual school census (2004-2017), the authors document a small negative...
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Project
Teacher gender and the gender gap in education
Mozambique is characterised by low levels of education and a significant gender gap in education. The literacy rate among the 15 to 24-year-olds is only 71%. Within this age group, the literacy gap between men and women amounts to 16 percentage points (UIS 2015). Anecdotal evidence suggests that the lack of female teachers, especially in rural areas, is an important...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Reducing school staffing imbalances and wasteful government spending in Zambia
This project addresses two closely related concerns: Staffing imbalances: Pupil-teacher ratios vary from less than 20 to above 100 across public primary schools in Zambia. Payroll mismatch: Teachers frequently do not work at the schools that they are recorded at in government payroll. Payroll mismatch does not only have implications for the distribution...
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Publication - Policy Brief
State management of education and educational performance in Zambia
This brief examines the relationship between management quality in the local public administration of schools and students’ educational performance in Zambia. The researchers find that: Management practices vary widely across District Education Offices in Zambia; The quality of management at the district level is positively correlated with student test...
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Project
Electrification of schools in Zambia
In the 7th National Development Plan, the Government of Zambia strives to establish an integrated approach to national development that coordinates development across sectors. For this purpose, it is crucial to understand complementarities in the provision of public services across sectors. The objective of this project is to map the electrification of schools in Zambia...
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Publication - Project Report
The allocation of teachers across public primary schools in Zambia
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Publication - Project Report
The spatial distribution of health services in Zambia
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Publication - Policy Brief
Onde estão os professores? Distribuição dos professores em escolas públicas em Moçambique
Desde o aperto fiscal após a suspensão do apoio ao orçamento geral do Estado pelos principais doadores bilaterais, em 2016, aumentou a preocupação do governo em relação ao uso eficiente dos recursos no sector da educação; Os professores são um elemento-chave no sistema de ensino e o maior componente na estrutura de custos do sector de educação pública em...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Where are the teachers? The distribution of teachers across public primary schools in Mozambique
Following the suspension of general budget support by the main bilateral donors in 2016, consequent fiscal tightening has seen the efficient use of resources in the education sector becoming a priority of the Mozambican government. Teachers are the largest cost component in the public education sector in Mozambique, with their compensation accounting for more than...
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Publication - Project Report
Missing links and mismatches: Data challenges with policy implications
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Publication - Miscellaneous
Presentation: The allocation of teachers across public schools in Zambia
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Publication - Miscellaneous
Presentation: The distribution of health services in Zambia
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Project
The spatial distribution of health services in Zambia
While a lack of resources has been identified as a major issue in the health sector in many developing countries, little is known about misallocation of health resources within countries as a hindrance to health care provision. Existing evidence on the distribution of health workers across regions in African countries points towards large spatial imbalances and some have...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Where are the teachers? Staffing inequities across Zambian public schools
This brief analyses the distribution of teachers across public schools in Zambia and looks at the administrative challenges linked to teacher allocation. The researcher finds large staffing inequities across public schools. While 10% of public primary school pupils attend schools with pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs) below 30 pupils per teacher, 16% of pupils –...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Integrating administrative databases to improve resource allocation in the Zambian health sector: An application to the spatial distribution of health workers
The Zambian Ministry of Health (MoH) and its partners collect a wide variety of data on health services. However, this information is generally recorded in separate, unlinked datasets that can only be used in isolation from each other. This brief illustrates how the integration of administrative datasets into a single health database can support efficient resource...
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Project
(Mis)allocation of teachers and state capacity
Cross-country differences in educational attainment are large. Despite a massive expansion of primary schooling in developing countries in the last decades, a substantial share of the population in low-income countries still does not complete primary education. Since teachers are a key input into the education process and teacher compensation constitutes a major part of...
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Publication - Project Report
Evaluating Zambia's 2013 salary reform
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Project
Productivity in the civil service: Understanding the impact of payroll reform on worker performance
The provision of public services depends critically on the skills and motivation of the agents tasked with providing them. And yet, civil servant underperformance plagues many countries, with cross-national studies reporting average daily absenteeism rates among public health workers and teachers of 19 and 35 percent, respectively. This project covers the initial steps...
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Project
Pilot study on productivity in the civil service: Understanding the impact of compensation as a driver of worker performance
While the effect of performance related incentives on productivity has been widely addressed in the literature (e.g. Bandiera, Barankay, and Rasul (2005), (2007), (2009); Ashraf, Bandiera, and Jack (2014); Hearer (2004); Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan, (2012); Lazear (2000); Fryer (2011); Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011)), the impact of an exogenous increase in wages in the...