International Financial Institutions have advocated the privatization of integrated agricultural monopsonies in developing countries with the hope that competition between private firms under a contract farming system would reduce inefficiencies in production and enable farmers to obtain a...

"Household surveys have long been used to estimate poverty and inequality trends, as well as trends in education and health indicators, but they have not been used to the same extent to assess trends in the access to or coverage of modern infrastructure services. In this paper, we use...

Water and sanitation utilities in Africa operate in a high-cost environment. They also have a mandate to at least partially recover their costs of operations and maintenance (O&M). As a result, water tariffs are higher than in other regions of the world. The increasing block tariff (IBT) is the...

Public-private partnerships in education: an overview / Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Harry Anthony Patrinos, and Quentin Wodon -- The effectiveness of franchises and independent private schools in Chile's national voucher program / Gregory Elacqua, Dante Contreras, and Felipe Salazar -- Cognitive...

In the literature on the religious contribution to health and development, it is commonly stated that faith-inspired institutions (FIIs) provide from 30 to 70 per cent of all health care provision in Africa. This article tracks the sources of such statements back to the 1960s, highlighting a...

The book, public finance for poverty reduction, includes a series of papers that were prepared in the context of a World Bank Institute (WBI) public finance The book, public finance for poverty reduction, includes a series of papers that were prepared in the context of a WBI public finance...