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Blog Post
October 25, 2021
As Afghanistan enters its harsh winter season, a massive humanitarian disaster appears increasingly likely. Facing food shortages, rising prices, and a breakdown in public services, millions of ordinary Afghans need immediate assistance as their country veers toward economic collapse.
Blog Post
September 27, 2021
Going digital can greatly improve the efficiency of public services. But just as well-designed digital applications can strengthen the citizen-state relationship, poorly designed or ill-conceived applications can weaken that relationship by creating unnecessary complexity, reducing transparenc...
Blog Post
September 01, 2021
When schools in Sierra Leone closed last March, the government was more ready than many to respond. We designed a randomised control trial which assigned 4,399 students from 25 government primary schools to receive—in addition to the standard access to the government’s broadcast that all students re...
Blog Post
August 16, 2021
The recent $5 billion overnight cut in UK foreign aid highlights the importance of understanding the politics of aid spending. This blog explores the role of international travel by rich country citizens to poorer countries in determining attitudes towards aid, and the potential value of volunteer t...
Blog Post
August 10, 2021
The education gaps that are closing between boys and girls in many countries persist in Pakistan. Our large new household survey on the factors associated with differences in gender norms sheds light on what policymakers can do in the post-COVID world to address the gender gap and improve opportunit...
Blog Post
July 20, 2021
The official Covid death count in India as of end-June 2021 is 400,000. The reality is, of course, catastrophically worse. Unlike in other countries, authoritative excess death estimates based on official data have not been available because government recording of deaths, especially at the center, ...