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Project
The impact of career opportunities on aspirations and educational outcomes
Issues surrounding recruiting and motivating a high-performing public workforce are central to efforts to improve state effectiveness. The research team conducted a national recruitment experiment in Zambia - embedded in the 2012 launch of a new cadre of community health workers (CHW) - the Community Health Assistant (CHA). In contrast to volunteer CHWs, CHAs are government...
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Project
Digital literacy, land rights, and agricultural productivity in Bihar
E-governance is the integration of information and communications technology (ICT) into the management of public programmes. It has altered the landscape for rights protection and service delivery. However, the success of some e-governance initiatives hinges on citizen engagement, which depends on digital literacy, knowledge of rights, and self-efficacy in claiming...
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Project
Supply chains, international trade, and gaps in tax compliance
The Rwandan Government is engaging in on-going trade reforms and discussions which continuously vary the cost of importing types of goods from specific countries of origin. These reforms imply changes in the amount of revenue that the Government collects at the border, which currently remains a substantial source of revenue to fund essential public goods. The concern over...
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Project
A roadmap for closing gender gaps in Bihar – Gender Responsive Budgeting
Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is a critical global accountability framework to plan, allocate, programme, and monitor adequate resources by governments to fulfil their commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE). In India, GRB has charted a significant path since 1992. The Five-Year Plans - starting from the Eight Plan (1992-97) - have recognised...
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Project
Can police enforcement reduce child marriage? Evidence from India
Child marriage severely affects female well-being across the developing world, yet its causes remain poorly understood. Research that does examine the determinants of child marriage tends to focus on cultural- and economic factors that are difficult, if not impossible, to directly affect public policy. Inspired by interviews with local NGO workers specialised in the...
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Project
Improving skills in Bihar: How to reduce drop-out rates from training programmes?
India, like other developing countries, suffers from low productivity of labour (Bloom et al. 2014). Training the labour force is the primary policy to increase skills and labour productivity. However, the literature has shown that designing successful training programmes is difficult (Blattman and Ralston 2016, McKenzie 2017). In many instances, they suffer from low...
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Project
Improving customer repayments practices for water and sewer services in Kenyan informal settlements
2.5 billion people in the developing world have no access to improved sanitation, and over a billion of them still practice open defecation. Rapid urbanisation has resulted in an increase of 183 million urban residents without access to improved sanitation. The inability of the utilities to deliver adequate sanitation services has disproportionately hurt poor urban...
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Project
Bringing property owners into the tax net: Avenues of fiscal capacity and local accountability. Experimental evidence from Dakar, Senegal.
Property taxes are levied for local governments and often represent an important component in their budget funding. They play a crucial role in the face of increasing needs for public services in rapidly growing cities. In the context of developing countries - with cadastre shortcomings, weak administrative information and IT systems, and poor enforcement tools - most local...
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Project
Firm growth and information frictions in the market for skills
This study is motivated by two major challenges confronting low-income countries: Rising unemployment and underemployment, and low productivity and growth in firms. An important reason for this is information frictions in the labour market that affect both firms and work-seekers. On the demand side, firms may have limited information about the skills of workers when they...
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Project
Peer-review of Jordanian local administration law
The Draft Local Administration Law for 2019 (the Draft Law) is intended to replace the Law on Decentralisation (Law No. 49 of 2015) and the Law on Municipalities (Law No. 41 of 2015). In this regard, it combines the provisions of the previous two laws with respect to governorates, municipal councils, and local councils. It also places responsibility for the Draft Law under...
Project
Female politicians and economic growth: Evidence from state elections in India
The project studies close elections between men and women for election to India's state legislative assemblies. It finds significantly higher growth in economic activity in constituencies that elect women. Given average GDP growth in India of about 7% per year (during the study period), the researchers estimate the growth premium for constituencies from having a...