The authors use a multilevel modeling procedure to explore 1) the percentage of variance in secondary school achievement in Brazil that could be attributed to the types of school attended, 2) differences between schools in students'achievement in mathematics and Portuguese, and 3) differences...

Formal strategic planning and management appear to contribute to organizational effectiveness. The author surveys the literature on strategic management in private/for-profit organizations and applies lessons from that literature to population programs. Few would argue that population programs...

The authors examine how a government-run cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the health and development of their children. This program is of particular interest because, unlike other transfer programs that have been implemented recently in Latin America,...

Researchers have recently been asking why Asian and European minorities in Africa seem to be more successful in business than are people of indigenous ethnicity. The author draws attention to the significant disparity in business ownership and performance that seems to exist among African ethnic...

A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer...

This paper investigates the effects of intermittent screening and treatment of malaria on the health and education of school children in an area of low-to-moderate malaria transmission. A cluster randomized trial was implemented with 5,233 children in 101 government primary schools on the south...

This paper finds large effects on the earnings of participants from a randomized intervention that gave psychosocial stimulation to stunted Jamaican toddlers living in poverty. The intervention consisted of one-hour weekly visits from community Jamaican health workers over a 2-year period that...

Development from conception to five years of age can determine later life outcomes ranging from educational achievement, labor market success, to risky and delinquent behaviors. Crises can cause nutritional deprivation which can negatively affect physiological and neurological development during...

One of the most fruitful advances in modern economics has been the introduction of psychological realism into the model of"economic man."The World Development Report 2015 organizes the evidence about how humans actually think and make decisions into a coherent framework useful for designing...

This paper estimates the relationshipbetween family background, school characteristics, and student achievement in primary school in two Latin American countries, Argentina and Colombia, as well as several comparison countries. The database used is the student-level international achievement...