As opposed to many other school inputs, textbooks have frequently been demonstrated to significantly foster student achievement. Using the rich data set provided by the 'Program on the Analysis of Education Systems' (PASEC) for five francophone, sub-Saharan African countries, this paper goes...

In recent years, the discussion on the forms of organisation of the Franc Zone has again grown more controversial. The present article explains the functional structure of this currency association, and discusses the arguments of its critics.

Households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks resulting in high consumption volatility. A household's currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household's general poverty risk, or in other words its...

Based on a statistical procedure that combines household survey data with population census data, this paper presents estimates of inequality for three developing countries at a level of disaggregation far below that allowed by household surveys alone. We show that while the share of...

This paper implements a methodology for estimating poverty in Ecuador, Madagascar and South Africa, at levels of disaggregation that to date have not generally been available. The methodology is based on a statistical procedure to combine household survey data with population census data,...

Ursprünglich sollte diese Studie eine vorwiegend empirische Bestandsaufnahme des soziokulturellen Strukturwandels und des touristisch induzierten Wandels auf der Mikroebene der Insel S.te Marie vermitteln - eine weitreichende Sichtung der theoretischen Forschung hat jedoch die Bedeutung einer...

Over the past decade, several Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have developed or expanded export-oriented apparel industries in the context of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas and preferential market access, most importantly under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)....

This paper studies the political economy of relief aid allocation using empirical evidence from relief programs after a major cyclone (Gafilo) hit Madagascar in March 2004. Relief was provided by the Government of Madagascar as well as local and international aid agencies. Aid allocation was...

This paper investigates how the choice of public expenditure instrument is affecting capture in the public education sector. We analyze data on two public funding schemes in Madagascar. We find that there is much more capture of in-kind transfers than of cash transfers. Capture of both...