Integrating information for the purpose of articulating social protection policies is hard work. It requires a combination of political will, capacity for institutional cooperation, software development and direct communication channels with citizens. Because of this complexity, countries that...

Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

Aadhaar, India's ambitious biometric ID project, was portrayed as one that would enhance India's welfare efforts by promoting inclusion and reducing corruption. From being a voluntary ID, it has become de facto compulsory for most welfare programmes such as the National Rural Employment...

Between 1970 and the early 2000s, there was a revolution in support for the use of field experiments to evaluate social programs. Focusing on the welfare reform studies that helped to speed that transformation in the United States, this chapter describes the major challenges to implementing...