We study the implementation of Bolsa Familia, a program that conditions cash transfers to poor families on children's school attendance. Using unique administrative data, we analyze how beneficiaries respond to the enforcement of conditionality. Making use of random variation in the day on which...

This paper studies two experiments of early childhood development programs in The Gambia: one increasing access to services, and another improving service quality. In the first experiment, new community-based early childhood development (ECD) centers were introduced to randomly chosen villages...

We explore the effects of a randomly assigned conditional cash transfer in Honduras (Bono 10000) on early childhood development. We find significant impacts on cognitive development in children 0-60 months, with an average effect size of 0.13 SD. We show differential impacts by type of transfer:...

Conditional Cash Transfer programs are designed to increase human capital in poorer families. They do this directly through incentives and conditions. A further way in which these programs may influence household decisions is through impacts on preferences. Preferences may change as a result of...

Efforts to enforce compulsory schooling by linking welfare assistance to school attendance are rarely successful in themselves. One reason is a lack of credibility: targeted families may anticipate that welfare administrators will be reluctant to withdraw support when attendance does not...

The need for graduates who would be productive citizens able to contribute significantly to the Nigerian economy led to the overhaul of the old education system 6-5-4 and the implementation of the 6-3-3-4 system, with its first set of graduates from secondary schools in 1988. The main objective...

This paper studies the effect of women's higher education on fertility outcomes in Ethiopia. We exploit an abrupt increase in the supply of tertiary education induced by a deregulation policy. Using an age discontinuity in the exposure to higher education reform, we find that education lowers...

We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: first, supply-side capability interventions that...

Labor productivity is an important determinant of the wealth of national economies and standards of living, as its growth explains half of per capita GDP growth. We show that there are four worlds of productivity growth among industrialized countries, by decomposing labor productivity growth...

The paper is based on evidence offered by survey data collected through a structured questionnaire in a long range survey launched in July 2012 by the Steering Group of ASE Forum. The aim of the study was to reveal the trend, status, profile, features and the role of potentials enterprises in...