Adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health care facilities plays a critical role in ensuring improved health care utilization and reducing disease burden due to reinfection. WASH in health facilities is now gaining momentum with the new SDG targets that governments have vowed to...

Rural accessibility is the only metric used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress toward better transport services in low- and middle-income countries. This paper estimates the rural accessibility index, defined as the proportion of the rural population who live within 2...

This paper studies the sustainability of early childhood education centers established under a large-scale, donor-funded project in rural Indonesia. Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data shows that 86 percent of the centers continued to provide preschool services three years after...

Small trading activities are a prevalent form of self-employment in developing countries, but their integration into supply value chains is not efficient, especially when it comes to perishable produce. This study tests a novel approach to improve their efficiency by reducing the time and cost...

"The authors explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 rural communities of the Philippines, the paper shows that where transaction costs are reduced (proxied by road construction), there is an increase in generalized...

"A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer...