Recruiting female teachers is frequently suggested as a policy option for improving girls' education outcomes in developing countries, but there is surprisingly little evidence on the effectiveness of such a policy. The gender gaps in learning outcomes are studied, and the effectiveness of...

Is the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries in education, personal autonomy, and more explained by underdevelopment itself? Or do the societies that are poor today hold certain cultural views that lead to gender inequality? This article discusses several mechanisms through...

Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, it is shown that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. Shallow learning...

This study attempts to highlight the importance of hydrological information to the user communities from a socio-economic perspective. It shows, based on the evidence, how groundwater is depleting along with increasing dependence over the years across the regions of Andhra Pradesh. [WP No. 92]....

China and India have both attempted distorting the exchange rate in order to foster exports-led growth. This is described as the Bretton Woods II framework, where developing countries buy bonds in the US and keep undervalued exchange rates, in order to foster export-led growth. The costs and...

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30 percent of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign...