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,...

The COVID-19 crisis has a severe impact on education and employment and exposed the many social inequities that make some populations more vulnerable to shocks. Despite a vast literature on social mobility in advanced economies, little is known about it in African countries, mainly due to data...

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 quantifies the magnitude and nature of migration flows from the Caribbean and estimates their costs and benefits. The Caribbean countries have lost 10-40 percent of their labor force due to emigration to OECD member countries. The migration rates are particularly striking for the...

This paper examines the effect of international trade on corporate market power in emerging market economies and developing countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is based on a large firm-level dataset, tariff data by sector and agreggate indicators of international...

This paper contributes to the literature by introducing the role of geographic concentration of the source of remittances. Specifically, using data over 2010-2015 for 72 developing countries, we study the impact of (i) large remittances and (ii) the geographic concentration of the source of...

Over the past seven years, the DIG and DIGNAR models have complemented the IMF and World Bank debt sustainability framework (DSF) analysis, over 65 country applications. They have provided useful insights in the context of program and surveillance work, based on qualitative and quantitative...

This paper estimates the causal effect of fiscal rules on political budget cycles in a sample of 67 developing countries over the period 1985-2007. We exploit the geographical pattern in the adoption of fiscal rules to isolate an exogenous source of variation in the adoption of national fiscal...