Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information...

Many production firms use intermediary trading firms to export indirectly. This paper uses Chinese export data at the transaction level to investigate the tax evasion motive through indirect trade. The paper provides strong evidence that, under China's partial export value-added tax rebate...

Drawing on a new set of nationally representative, internationally comparable household surveys, this paper provides an overview of key features of structural transformation?labor allocation and labor productivity?in four African economies. New, micro-based measures of sector labor allocation...

In the last decade Morocco undertook substantial, if gradual, trade liberalization by reducing tariffs, reforming trade regulations and signing free and preferential trade agreements with several regions and countries, including the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries....

Better insurance against rainfall risk could improve the security of hundreds of millions of agricultural households around the world. However, customers have shown little demand for stand-alone insurance products. This paper theoretically and experimentally analyzes an innovative financial...

Sex ratios at birth rose sharply in the South Caucasus countries after 1991, but recent data indicate that this trend is turning. What caused this rise, and what can be done to accelerate its normalization? Traditional kinship systems in the region are similar to those of other settings with...

The purpose of this study is to build a stronger evidence base on the role of faith-inspired, private secular, and public schools in sub-Saharan Africa using nationally representative household surveys as well as qualitative data. Six main findings emerge from the study: (1) Across a sample of...