Aid and conditionalities are the"carrots and sticks"of the conventional, direct approach to fostering economic development. The economic theory of agency is the most sophisticated treatment of the direct carrots-and-sticks approach to influencing human behavior. Considering the outcomes of the...

The authors develop a method in which vignettes-a battery of questions for hypothetical cases-are evaluated with item response theory to create a metric for doctor quality. The method allows a simultaneous estimation of quality and validation of the test instrument that can be used for further...

The quality of medical care is a potentially important determinant of health outcomes. Nevertheless, it remains an understudied area. The limited research that exists defines quality either on the basis of drug availability or facility characteristics, but little is known about how provider...

Between 1971 and 1983, Korea's mean gender earnings ration remained virtually stagnant at 47 percent. But after 1983, the earnings ration took a distinct turn upward. In other words, not until after 1983 did Korean women make any progress in closing the gender-earnings gap. when controlling for...

Past research often attributed most differences in student learning to socioeconomic factors, implying that the potential for direct educational interventions to reduce learning inequality was limited. The author shows that learning achievement can be improved through appropriately designed and...

In the past, research findings indicated that most of the differences in student learning were due to socioeconomic factors, and that, therefore, the effect of direct educational interventions to reduce learning inequality was very limited. However, the authors show that learning achievement...

The author seeks to broaden our understanding of the determinants of student achievement among East Asian economies using the TIMSS-R data set and, in the process, to remedy some of the ambiguities in the literature to date. These ambiguities are frequently due to the sparseness of detailed data...

Early studies of educational achievement in developing countries emphasized the effects of material inputs (such as textbooks) over teaching practices and classroom organization. This paper examines how five teaching practices affected the achievements of fifth grade students in the Philippines...

This paper investigates whether a large-scale deworming intervention aimed at primary school pupils in western Kenya had long-term effects on young children in the region. The paper exploits positive externalities from the program to estimate the impact on younger children who did not receive...

Early life health and net nutrition shape childhood and adult cognitive skills and human capital. In poor countries -- and especially in South Asia -- widespread open defecation without making use of a toilet or latrine is an important source of childhood disease. This paper studies the effects...