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Blog Post
March 21, 2024
As many developing countries approach universal enrollment in primary school, the World Bank has emerged as one of the most prominent advocates for a pivot “from schooling access to learning outcomes” in recent decades. The most recent education strategy of the Bank, adopted in 2011, emphasizes the ...
WORKING PAPERS
March 21, 2024
Since 2011, the World Bank’s education strategy has emphasized the need to shift focus from schooling to learning, and towards primary education with special attention to foundational skills. But this shift is not always easy to see in the actual lending data. Coding new details on 25 years of World...
WORKING PAPERS
April 25, 2023
This paper examines the link between ministerial continuity in borrower governments and the performance of World Bank education projects implemented between 2000 and 2017 in 114 countries. I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to trace the link between number of ministers durin...
Blog Post
April 25, 2023
Much ink has been spilled over the impact of borrowing country institutions and the policies and practices of donor organizations on aid effectiveness. But what do we know about the role of those individuals who often represent the key interface between country-level institutions and donor-funded pr...
Blog Post
April 20, 2022
In 2021, Ghana announced a plan to issue sovereign bonds of up to $2 billion, with proceeds due partially to fund a free secondary school program. Just months later, Ghana’s rising debt burden means this is no longer feasible. Can developing countries tap the social bond market in order to fund publ...
Blog Post
December 06, 2021
The use of foreign aid to support poor countries with inadequate implementation capacity and weak regulatory institutions has at times, been described as “pouring money into a leaky bucket.” Given that there is seldom a quick fix for inadequate state capacity, aid programs can employ internal contro...
Blog Post
November 28, 2012
This is a joint post with Lawrence MacDonald.
What do the stalled climate talks getting underway in Doha, Qatar, this week and the partisan jousting in Washington over the impending “fiscal cliff” have in common? Not much if you get your information from the mainstream media, which has mostly...
Blog Post
May 17, 2012
This is a joint post with Christian Meyer.
One of the pressing questions for Jim Kim in the years ahead as the World Bank’s new president is what to do as many countries graduate out of IDA, the bank’s fund for grants and concessional loans to the poorest countries. To generate ideas and poss...
Blog Post
February 28, 2012
This post is joint with Arvind Subramanian
The next World Bank president will need the legitimacy and wide support that only an open and merit-based selection process can ensure. This is now commonly agreed. The best way to ensure legitimacy is to have more than one serious candidate. The Oba...