Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do....

Learning profiles, that track changes in student skills per year of schooling, often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow...

There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations--which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates--and executive organizations--which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. Ministries of finance/planning/budgeting allocate across ministries and...

The global moving out of poverty study is unique in several respects. It is one of the few large-scale comparative research efforts to focus on mobility out of poverty rather than on poverty alone. The study draws together the experiences of poor women and men who have managed to move out of...

In many nations today the state has little capability to carry out even basic functions like security, policing, regulation or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term task. Countries like Haiti or Lib

Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry.that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like

Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow...

Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry--that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. In...

Economic growth in developing countries is characterized by frequent shifts in growth regimes. Following Pritchett (2000), there is a large empirical literature that has tried to identify the timing of these shifts in economic growth. Two distinct approaches have been developed by this...