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Project
Willingness or ability to pay? Expanding electricity access with cost sharing and financing
Lack of access to electricity represents a large impediment to achieving higher income levels. The Government of Uganda has recognised this both in Vision 2040 and the National Development Plan, and set the goal of achieving universal electrification by the year 2040. Energy access goes beyond simply providing the population with access to an energy source. In order to...
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Project
Government mobile salary payments in Afghanistan
Governments must pay their employees for states to function. The current salary payment system in Afghanistan involves a combination of cash transfers and bank-based electronic funds transfers (EFTs). It is subject to frequent delays and, in some cases, severe leakage. Mobile Salary Payments (MSPs) hold the potential to simplify and improve the payment process, as...
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Project
Tax capacity and state accountability: Firm owner and taxpayer responses to information
How can low-cost methods of encouraging tax compliance in developing countries be most effectively constructed to encourage both new and current taxpayers? How does taxation lead to the demand for governmental accountability? There are various studies which have measured the impact of government-sponsored messages on the behaviour of firms and taxpayers. Generally, threats...
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Project
Preventing Islamic radicalisation in Mozambique: Through faith or employment?
The economics and political science literature on conflict and civil wars is vast. Mostly, it focuses on the causes of the outbreak and duration of conflicts and distinguishes between (lack of) economic opportunity and grievance motivations. The generalised consensus is that economic variables are highly correlated with (and even affect) the outbreak of conflict (e.g....
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Project
Exchange rate shocks and firm behaviour: Evidence from Ethiopia and Uganda
As developing countries, Uganda and Ethiopia frequently face exchange rate shocks. The effect of exchange rate shocks on the performance of firms is not well understood. In Ethiopia, policymakers devalue the local currency to correct misalignment. The effect of such devaluation is of interest to policymakers. Manufacturing firms in developing countries rely on imported...
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Project
Understanding demand and funding for water supply in Mandalay City
The Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) - the governing body of municipal Mandalay, Myanmar - faces significant problems surrounding their water services. Currently, piped water reaches only a fraction of the population, there is little water and sewage treatment capacity, and MCDC faces exorbitant financial losses (over K3700 mil, 2016-17). MCDC has been working...
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Project
Quality upgrading in Myanmar's rice sector
Linking developing countries’ agricultural producers to foreign markets often requires upgrading product quality (Gereffi (1999), Verhoogen (2008), Atkin et al. (2017)). Typical interventions seek to target a single point along the chain, such as improving fertiliser access to farmers or providing processors credit to upgrade technology. For agricultural goods, achieving...
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Project
Incubation of capabilities to run centralised assignment mechanisms in Rwanda: A Prototype for the case of teacher assignment
Effective deployment of skilled and motivated teachers can play a crucial role in ultimately fostering learning and as a consequence economic growth, reducing teacher attrition and turnover rates, and increasing teacher satisfaction and performance. The literature on matching has studied many of the specific challenges related to the teacher deployment problem, and...
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Project
From paper to practice: Implementing civil service reform in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia
This project aims to document and explain the implementation record of performance-oriented civil service reforms in Africa. It will use Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia as case studies. Most recent research on state effectiveness has focused on identifying the causal effects of particular management practices or experimental interventions. However, most large-scale changes to how...
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Project
Competitiveness analysis of the Rwanda textile industry
The National Industrial Research Development Agency (NIRDA) engaged a local consultant to gather data on the garments value chain with a view to analysing its competitiveness in an international perspective, and developing recommendations to support productivity upgrading. This project will make use of the data collected to design a framework for analysing and tracking...
Project
Female politicians and economic growth: Evidence from state elections in India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS7YtrR2yjU&feature=emb_logo 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...