The innovation and venture capital (VC) worlds work on the belief that there are plug-and-play ideas which can meaningfully address persistent and intractable development challenges. Further, they believe that these innovations can arise from the most unexpected places through entrepreneurial...

Developmental disabilities are not rare among U.S. children and rates have been increasing in recent decades. The increases have been driven by cognitive and behavioral disorders. While some studies have investigated the effects of specific childhood conditions, particularly ADHD, on adult...

We tend to abstract from the conventional economic wisdom that “bouncing back” to the economy that existed prior to March 17, 2020 is a great idea. The economic structure in America was already deeply flawed and damaged from 20 years of economic integration with the rest of the world and...

In this paper, we attempt to explore the extent to which the hard won development gains over the last several years could be reversed due to the unfolding COVID-19 global pandemic, how we can reboot the global response to accelerate the SDGs in times of uncertainties, and most importantly how to...

Previous randomized studies have shown that addressing children's current learning gaps, rather than following an over-ambitious uniform curriculum, can lead to significant learning gains. In this study, we evaluate a series of efforts to scale up the NGO Pratham's approach to teaching children...

The promise of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is that evidence gathered through the evaluation of a specific program helps us — possibly after several rounds of fine-tuning and multiple replications in different contexts — to inform policy. However, critics have pointed out that a...

The AEL consists of empirical macro studies of the effects of development aid. At the end of 2004 it had reached 97 studies of three families, which we have summarized in one study each using meta-analysis. Studies of the effect on investments show that they rise by 1/3 of the aid - the rest is...

The AEL (aid effectiveness literature) studies the effect of development aid using econometrics on macro data. It contains about 100 papers of which a third analyzes conditional models where aid effectiveness depends upon z, so that aid only works for a certain range of the variable. The key...

The AEL (aid effectiveness literature) is econometric studies of the macroeconomic effects of development aid. It contains about 100 papers of which 68 are reduced form estimates of the effect of aid on growth in the recipient country. The raw data show that growth is unconnected to aid, but the...

The Catawba Digital Economic Zone (“CDEZ”) achieved a number of firsts when it launched in late 2022: the world’s first entirely virtual special jurisdiction devoted to financial services using technologies like blockchains, cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and artificial intelligence...