Showing 1 - 10 of 56
Public policy work is hard, especially when one works in developing countries. It is even difficult to define what success looks like, and thus how to manage towards success. Literature helps manage such difficulty, providing studies that define the concept and show how it can be achieved. A...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014076441
A central authority possessing tax and expenditure responsibilities can readily provide an efficient level of a public good. Absent a central authority, the case with climate change mitigation, voluntary arrangements must replace coercive arrangements; significant under-provision must be...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014127347
We estimate the impact on pilgrims of performing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Our method compares successful and unsuccessful applicants in a lottery used by Pakistan to allocate Hajj visas. Pilgrim accounts stress that the Hajj leads to a feeling of unity with fellow Muslims, but outsiders...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012724519
Development involves change, but many development initiatives produce unimpressive results. The authors ask why and consider how to close the gap between the intended change and what we actually see in the evidence. This paper presents the findings of a study, initiated by the multi-donor Global...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014198077
traced back to good institutions, including property rights (particularly non-expropriation of sugar plantations), abjuration … cabinet). But from where did the good institutions come? They were chosen around the time of independence (1968). Why in … dysfunctional politics. Here, however, it brings cosmopolitan benefits. The institutions manage to balance the ethnic groups; none …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014191292
Much of development policy has been based on the search for a short to do list that would get countries moving. In this paper I argue that economic activity requires a large and highly interacting set of public policies and services, which constitute inputs into the production process. This is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014212112
Understanding the differences between rich and poor places is complicated by the fact that places differ from each other in numerous ways. In this paper, we show how a dimension reduction algorithm can unveil hidden patterns in US census data and consistently yield useful insights into the type...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012912692
We develop new quasi-experimental tools to measure racial discrimination, due to either racial bias or statistical discrimination, in the context of bail decisions. We show that the omitted variables bias in observational release rate comparisons can be purged by using the quasi-random...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014100227
This study asks the question, quot;Is Black Economic Empowerment a South African growth catalyst?quot; It addresses the question with reference to the theoretical literature on economic and organizational structures. This literature argues that structures reflect values and influence patterns of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012723164
We study the economic effects of religious practices in the context of the observance of Ramadan fasting, one of the central tenets of Islam. To establish causality, we exploit variation in the length of the fasting period due to the rotating Islamic calendar. We report two key, quantitatively...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013056956