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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
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
May 02, 2014
Earlier this year, Uganda’s President signed into law an Anti-Homosexuality Act that strengthens penalties against gay people and defines some homosexual acts as crimes punishable by life in prison. If enforced to its full extent, the law is expected to endanger public he...
Blog Post
October 03, 2013
This is a joint post with Mead Over.
The new World Bank Group Strategy posted this week for discussion by the Development Committee, the ministerial-level forum that oversees the World Bank and the IMF, provides a solid analytical foundation for what has so far been a messy and...
Blog Post
September 04, 2013
This is a joint post with Alan Gelb.
In response to our August 5 blog criticizing the World Bank’s current reorganization plans, a few readers wrote to ask us if we could come up with a better idea. This is a daunting challenge. We’ve heard that the Bank has spent millions over more tha...
Blog Post
August 05, 2013
This is a joint post with Mead Over.
The World Bank is reorganizing. Bloomberg reports that president Jim Yong Kim has written staff about a shake-up at the bank’s highest levels in preparation for implementing an as-yet-to-be-announced new institutional strategy. Such can be unsettling for b...
Blog Post
October 11, 2012
This blog post is co-authored with Martin Ravallion, who has been the Director of the World Bank’s Development Economics Research Group for several years and is currently Acting Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the Bank. The blog is cross-posted on the World Bank site here.
These ...