This paper uses household data to test whether microfinance institutions created by the Malawian government in the mid-1990s under its Poverty Alleviation Programme crowded out access to informal loans. As in several recent studies, the paper adopts policy evaluation techniques to identify a...

This paper analyses the effect of food price changes on household consumption (welfare) in Tanzania during the 1990s and 2000s, and simulates the welfare effect attributable to tax (tariffs and VAT) reforms, distinguishing both static (first order) and dynamic (full price) effects of price...

We develop a model of regulation of service-delivery NGOs, where future grants are conditional on prior spending of some minimal proportion of current revenue on direct project-related expenses. Such regulation induces some NGOs to increase current project spending, but imposes wasteful costs of...

This study examines survival patterns in a large, representative panel of Ugandan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) between 2002 and 2008. It finds no evidence that more effective or more altruistic NGOs have a greater likelihood of survival. The main determinant of survival appears to be...