Why do over 20% of children die in some poor countries, while in others only 2% die? We examine this question using survey data covering 278,000 children in 45 low-income countries. We find that parents' education and a mother's propensity to seek out modern healthcare are empirically important...

Political regimes and social rules have often served to suppress human rights and freedoms. In this paper I analyze the determinants of oppression when self-interested leaders seek to gain from oppressing a less powerful group. In my framework an oppressive regime is a rational equilibrium...

Critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure. In this paper I analyze the effectiveness of foreign aid programs to gain insights into political regimes in aid recipient countries. My analytical framework shows how three stylized political/economic...

We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of...

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been a heavily utilized research tool in medicine for over 60 years. Since the early 2000's, large-scale RCTs have been used in increasingly large numbers in the social sciences to evaluate questions of both policy and theory. The early economics...