This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates how the weak external and internal accountability undermines policy implementation and service...

Achieving the objective of China's current health system reform, namely equitable improvements in health outcomes, will be difficult not least because of the continuously growing income disparities in the country. The analysis in this paper shows that since 2000, disparity in selected health...

This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates how the weak external and internal accountability undermines policy implementation and service...

Reflecting on lessons from international experience and on China's policy context, this paper aims to outline the analytical and institutional framework that would help make essential public services of adequate quality universally accesible and enjoyed by all citizens affected by the earthquake...

This article presents an innovative approach to addressing governance challenges in public service delivery in China. It builds on a citizen scorecard survey covering 5,000 households in five cities: Chengdu, Dalian, Shanghai-Pudong, Shenzhen and Xi’an. The survey helped policy-makers reveal...

Reflecting on the lessons from international experience, this article aims to outline the analytical and institutional framework for restoring essential public services after a disaster. Specifically, this article offers a five-pillar framework to support successful reconstruction of essential...

To many, reducing water losses is seen as key to more sustainable water management. The arguments to reduce water losses are compelling, but reducing water losses has turned out to be challenging. This paper applies a panel data analysis with fixed effects to determine the major drivers of...

Aid is good for the poor. This paper uses detailed aid data spanning 60 developing countries over the past two decades to show that social aid significantly and directly benefits the poorest in society, while economic aid increases the income of the poor through growth. This new and unequivocal...

This paper uses the gravity model to analyze whether the varying export performance of Croatian counties can be explained by their proximity to border gates, ports, and other county-specific characteristics. The analysis finds that longer distances to border gates increase trade frictions...