In recent years, alongside democratic backsliding and security threats, censorship is increasingly used by governments and other societal actors to control the media. Who is likely to be affected by censorship and why? Does censorship as a form of punishment coexist with or act as a substitute...

This study explores the potential and the limits of medium-resolution satellite data as a proxy for economic activity at small geographic units. Using a commune-level dataset from Vietnam, it compares the performance of commonly used nightlight data and higher resolution Landsat imagery which...

This paper analyzes the reopening process of countries in Europe and Central Asia after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides evidence on the effects of different reopening trajectories and their timing and speed on economic recovery. The analysis indicates that countries that...

This article investigates the effect increasing secondary education opportunities has on teenage fertility in Brazil. Using a novel dataset to exploit variation from a 57 increase in secondary schools across 4,884 Brazilian municipalities between 1997 and 2009, the analysis shows an important...

This study proposes a novel supply-side mechanism driving economic structural transformation: grid electrification. Increasing electricity availability affects the reallocation of inputs to more productive activities through generating higher returns and lowering entry costs in sectors with...

What is the impact of greater teacher autonomy on student learning? This paper provides experimental evidence from a program in Brazil. The program supported teachers, through a combination of technical assistance and a small grant, to autonomously develop and implement an innovative project...

The production of export goods has become increasingly unbundled, and countries positioning to become more integrated in the global economy are increasingly looking toward global value chains. This paper uses the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/World Trade Organization's...

Traditionally, governments seek to mobilize tax revenues by expanding their enforcement of existing tax regimes and facilitating tax payments. However, enforcement and facilitation can be costly and produce diminishing marginal returns if citizens are unwilling to pay their taxes. This paper...

Electronic reverse auctions are the most used competitive method for procurement of goods and non-consulting services by the Federal Government of Brazil. These auctions are closed randomly, which perfectly satisfies fairness considerations but may be suboptimal from an efficiency perspective....

This paper examines two new methods to generate gridded agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and compares the results with a traditional method. In the case of Brazil, these two new methods of spatial disaggregation and cross-entropy outperform the prediction of agricultural GDP from the...