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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
June 09, 2022
Does channeling government-to-person (G2P) payments through bank accounts encourage financial inclusion and use? This paper explores the factors that have driven the adoption of digital payments in India by beneficiaries of PMGKY, the large-scale COVID-19 relief program launched in May 2020.
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
February 09, 2022
This paper explores the historical record in the development and deployment of vaccines globally and puts the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in that context. Although far more can be done and should be done to speed equitable access to vaccines in the COVID-19 response, it is worth noting the revolutionar...
WORKING PAPERS
December 17, 2021
This paper analyzes a rich pre-pandemic data set on both men and women business owners from 401 mainly rural villages in five regencies (kabupaten) of East Java province, Indonesia. There are some similarities but mostly large gender differences in characteristics and resources in this random sample...
WORKING PAPERS
July 20, 2021
India lacks an authoritative estimate of the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic. We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemic’s start through June 2021. Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive. But all estimates suggest tha...
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...