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Blog Post
April 16, 2024
Last month The Gambia’s National Assembly advanced a bill that, if ratified, would make it the first country to overturn a ban on female genital mutilation. These moves—supported by the predominantly male legislature—reflect the precarious nature of gains made in gender equality and have implication...
Blog Post
April 11, 2024
How schools are managed––things like budgets, staffing, and planning––matters for school effectiveness and children’s learning. But how easy is it to improve this (at scale) in poor countries? In a new CGD working paper we evaluate the impact of a large-scale school leader training programme impleme...
WORKING PAPERS
April 11, 2024
This study investigates the short-term impacts of a school leadership professional development program implemented in 525 randomly selected schools across Rwanda from 2018 to 2019. The program aimed to enhance the skills of school headteachers in leadership, management, and teacher support. Although...
WORKING PAPERS
April 04, 2024
Star firms, defined as the top 10 percentile of firms in the world in terms of return on invested capital, are more likely to occur in high-income countries and manufacturing industry, but there is an increasing share of star firms from middle-income countries and the services sector. Star firms hav...
Blog Post
April 04, 2024
A large academic and policy debate has focused on the increase in market concentration over the past few decades which has given rise to “star firms,” a small set of firms that generate abnormal returns for their investors. A common concern is that these firms exert excess market power and behave as...
WORKING PAPERS
April 02, 2024
Starting in 2001, duty-free access to U.S. markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) led to a brief boom in African manufacturing exports, particularly apparel, which then fizzled in the face of unfettered Chinese competition after 2005. The looming expiration of AGOA—and eroding C...
Blog Post
April 02, 2024
“Trade not aid” is a slogan that appeals to certain instincts on both the left and right. The idea being that rich countries can do more for economic development in poor countries by granting them market access than by sending charity. But will market access really stimulate economic growth in laggi...
WORKING PAPERS
March 25, 2024
The role of fathers in parenting young children differs dramatically across societies. Policymakers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly focused on increasing the amount of early childhood stimulation and other investments received by young children in an attempt to increase ...
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...