Despite the importance of knowing whether development programs achieve their objectives, impact evaluations remain rare in developing economies. This is unfortunate. With the growing use of results-based management by governments, determining whether goals have been attained and convincingly...

This essay reviews what economists have learned about the impact of labor market institutions, defined broadly as government regulations and union activity on labor outcomes in developing countries. It finds that: 1) Labor institutions vary greatly among developing countries but less than they...