In the past decade, hundreds of impact evaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes of education interventions in developing countries. The impact magnitudes are often reported in terms of "standard deviations," making them difficult to communicate to policy makers beyond education...

The diffusion of knowledge plays a central role in endogenous growth theories. Simply put, in these models new knowledge can be generated from preexisting knowledge. In other words, existing knowledge is a pure public good, which can benefit any economic agent anywhere. More generally,...

The role of innovation in improving productivity might vary according to a country's relative position in technology advancement. Frontier countries might benefit more from policies that promote firms' internal innovation (create), while follower countries would gain more from policies favoring...

This paper describes and benchmarks innovation activities for a sample of countries in the South Asia region, as well as the impact of these activities on firm-level productivity. The evidence gathered suggests that countries in the South Asia region can be divided into two groups, in terms of...

Social scientists frequently rely on the cardinal comparability of test scores to assess achievement gaps between population subgroups and their evolution over time. This approach has been criticized due to the ordinal nature of test scores and the sensibility of results to order-preserving...

From pork to performance illuminates the politics of how public resources are spent and the difficulty of the 'last mile' of service delivery. Crumbling facilities, absentee teachers, and roads to nowhere waste resources and retard development in many countries around the world. These failures...

The Kyrgyz Republic became a parliamentary democracy in 2010 following political turmoil and ethnic unrest. Kyrgyz Republic's economy has been resilient; however, the growth momentum of the past few years has been declining due to the difficult global economic environment and regional conflicts'...

The Subnational DeMPA is a methodology for assessing subnational debt management performance at the level of local government through a comprehensive set of indicators spanning the full range of subnational debt management functions. The SN DeMPA methodology was revised and aligned to the...

The objective of the mission was to assess the debt management strengths and areas in need of reform through the application of the Debt Management Performance Assessment (DeMPA) methodology. The DeMPA mission delivered an evaluation of the legal, institutional and regulatory framework in...