Education has played an important role in making Vietnam a development success story over the last 20 years. In the 1990s and early 2000s Vietnam experienced rapid economic growth. The accelerated growth was driven predominantly by productivity increases that came in the wake of a rapid shift of...

The 2003 PISA Korea sample is used to examine the association between within-school ability tracking and mathematics achievement. Estimates of a variety of econometric models reveal that tracking is positively associated with mathematics achievement among females and that this association...

The paper simulates a double-sided competitive market in temporary work permits between the U.S. and Mexico. Eligible working-age Americans would have the option of renting out their implicit work permits while Mexican workers have remunerative new opportunities. With plausible allowances for...

The claim that social protection is a luxury good-with a national income elasticity exceeding unity-has been influential. The paper tests the "luxury good hypothesis" using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period separately, as...

This paper uses a newly assembled data set on various types of social protection spending in 154 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 to analyze the effect of the electoral cycle on the size and composition of the social protection stimulus budget. The analysis shows that the...

This paper proposes a new Green Government IT index to assess the environmentally responsible use of computers and other resources by the information technology departments of government institutions and nonprofit organizations. The methodology used in the paper relies on the established...

This paper proposes an approach to guide statistical capacity building in developing countries using an analysis based on components of the World Bank's Statistical Performance Indicator on a sample of 215 countries. The approach demonstrates the importance of expanding traditional...