This paper examines the progressivity of social sector expenditures and taxes in eight sub-Saharan African countries. It uses dominance tests to determine whether health and education expenditures redistribute resources to the poor. The paper finds that social services are poorly targeted. Among...

This paper examines the effect of the efficiency of the education system on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). First, it focuses on the external efficiency and applies a frontier-based measure as a proxy of the ability of countries to optimally convert the average years of schooling into income...

While South Africa has made significant improvements in basic and tertiary education enrollment, the country still suffers from significant challenges in the quality of educational achievement by almost any international metric. The paper finds that money is clearly not the main issue since the...

This paper assesses the efficiency of education expenditure in Portugal and delineates a possible agenda for reform. Portugal’s low educational performance has coincided with the highest level of primary and secondary education expenditure to GDP in the Organization for Economic Cooperation...

This paper shows that during the 1990s, and before the 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea, the gender gap in education in Eritrea has widened on the national level, and large regional disparities have persisted. The gender gap appears to be linked to lower female teacher participation and limited...

Despite strong economic growth, a ""U""-curve unemployment phenomenon in Mauritius can be observed. Unemployment plunged from 21 percent to less than 4 percent between the early 1980s and the early 1990s, but this trend was reversed and the rate increased to 10 percent by end-2002. This paper...

This paper assesses the relative efficiency of government spending on health care and education in Croatia by using the so-called Data Envelopment Analysis. The analysis finds evidence of significant inefficiencies in Croatia''s spending on health care and education, related to inadequate cost...

Government intervention to correct market failures is often accompanied by government failures and corruption. This is no more evident than in social sectors that are characterized by significant market failures and government intervention. However, the impact of corruption on the public...

We discuss existing shortfalls and inequalities in the accumulation of human capital-knowledge, skills, and health. We analyze their immediate and systemic causes, and assess the scope for public intervention. The broad policy goals should be to improve: the quality, and not just the quantity,...

We exploit a survey data set that contains information on how 11,000 workers across advanced and emerging market economies perceive the main forces shaping the future of work. In general, workers feel more positive than negative about automation, especially in emerging markets. We find that...