Play during early childhood is key to stimulating children's physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. However, research on play-based learning is largely limited to high-income countries, and little is known about the use of hybrid interventions (which combine in-person and remote...

This study investigates the World Bank's use of lending and non-lending instruments to affect the policy priorities of developing countries. In a typical year, the World Bank lends more than USD 30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately USD 200 million on the provision of...

This paper shows that the increased policy-selectivity of aid allocations observed in recent years provides recipient countries an incentive to improve policies. The paper estimates that a change in the World Banks Country Policy and Institutional Assessment policy index from 1.5 to 2 for a...

This paper investigates the impact of World Bank development policy operations on the quality of economic policy during the period 1998-2015. A new theoretical framework distinguishes among three effects that have been conflated hitherto: (a) marginal impacts of additional policy actions within...

Results-based aid (RBA) models link funds to outcomes, rather than paying for inputs. Despite their theoretical appeal and recent adoption by donors and multilateral development banks, there is limited empirical evidence supporting this form of aid for national governments. We estimate the...

This paper contributes to the teacher sorting literature by analyzing equity in the distribution of teachers in three educational systems in Latin America, with different equalization policies, teacher assignment rules, and incentives to work in disadvantaged schools: Chile, Colombia, and Peru....