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WORKING PAPERS
February 23, 2024
As the politics of polarization gain traction and electoral support, a new vintage of populism is emerging in Latin America. This new version shares some aspects with the type of cultural populism now common in advanced economies that divides societies into antagonistic camps. But there are also imp...
WORKING PAPERS
May 02, 2023
Wage inequality in the public sector is an important determinant of the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies. Increasing the wages of public officials could help reduce corruption in countries with low public sector wage inequality, but in countries where public sector wages are highly unequal,...
WORKING PAPERS
June 25, 2022
We use new, detailed oil data and an event-study design to analyze political change in 36 oil-producing countries that experienced at least 10 years of declining production. We find that when their production starts to decline, they become significantly more democratic, relative to both the overall ...
WORKING PAPERS
April 21, 2022
Education is one of the most important public goods provided by modern governments. Yet governments worldwide seldom perform well in the sector. This raises the question: Why do governments preside over poor education quality? This paper answers this question with evidence from Tanzania.
WORKING PAPERS
February 23, 2022
We use comparable, survey-based literacy tests for repeated cross-sections of men and women born between 1950 and 2000 to study education outcomes across cohorts in 87 countries. We find that education quality, defined as literacy conditional on completing five years of schooling, stagnated or decli...
WORKING PAPERS
June 14, 2021
There will be 95 million fewer working-age people in Europe in 2050 than in 2015, under business as usual. The paper compares business as usual estimates of inflows to 2050 with the size of the labor gap in Europe. Under plausible estimates, business as usual will fill one-third of the labor gap. Th...
WORKING PAPERS
May 04, 2021
Students around the world lack foundational literacy and numeracy skills at striking rates. This essay examines the potential channels by which FLN investments and skills—which most systems teach in the early grades of primary school—may impact later schooling and subsequent life outcomes and t...
WORKING PAPERS
December 17, 2020
Cash transfers boost educational outcomes for poor children on average, but which aspects of educational performance are most responsive and which poor children benefit the most? This study examines the educational impacts of cash transfers, drawing on a randomized, community implemented conditional...
WORKING PAPERS
December 17, 2019
Onerous KYC documentation requirements are widely recognized as a potential constraint to full financial inclusion. However, it is sometimes difficult to judge the extent to which this constraint is a serious or binding one, relative to others. The paper considers this question, distinguishing betwe...