Education is widely accepted as a key determinant of economic and social development.Developing countries have made substantial progress in increasing school enrollment rates in thelast 50 years, but in many countries' students are not learning the skills that the curriculum setsas the goals of...

In recent decades, the Sri Lankan government has introduced reforms aimedat enhancing education access and quality, as well as emphasizing theimportance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM),which are crucial fields for economic development and social inclusion."Advancing...

Vietnam's ethnic minorities, who tend to live mostly in remote rural areas, typically have lower living standards than the ethnic majority. How much is this because of differences in economic characteristics (such as education levels and land) rather than low returns to characteristics? Is there...

The authors characterize poverty in Sri Lanka, using data from two recent household surveys (for 1985-86 and1990-91). Poverty rates in 1990-91 were highest in the rural sector and lowest in the estate sector, with the urban sector in between. Between 1985-86 and 1990-91, national poverty...

Routine"quick-and-dirty"methods of project appraisal can be so dirty in guiding project selection as to wipe out the net social gains from public investment, contend the authors, illustrating their point with a case study of irrigation projects in Vietnam. They test a common quick-and-dirty...

Recently developed counterfactual techniques that combine quantile regression with a bootstrap approach allow for the interpretation of lower quantiles of the "simulated unconditional wage distribution" as if they related to poor people. We use this approach to analyse gender wage gaps across...

The past few years have seen great progress in the area of poverty measurement, both in terms of the development and consolidation of best practice, and in conceptual and methodological advances. This study examines poverty measurement in Sri Lanka against the backdrop of these developments,...