In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect...

In many developing countries (and beyond), public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them-so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are...

This study was prepared for the Financial Services and Poverty Reduction research project and was presented at the conference with the same name held at Bank headquarters in September of 2004. It first establishes the considerable welfare cost borne by the region's poor when facing uncovered...

In many rural settings, informal mutual support networks have evolved into semiformal insurance groups, such as funeral societies. Using detailed panel data for six villages in Ethiopia, we can distinguish two types of contracts, in terms of whether payments are only made at the time of death or...