The vision of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Education Team is for education systems to empower all people to reach their full potential. In line with this vision, the purpose of this guidance note is to provide decision-makers with some recommendations and policy advice on effective ways to...

Carbon pricing is increasingly used by governments to reduce emissions. The effect of carbon pricing on economic outcomes as well as mitigating factors has been studied extensively since the early 1990s. One mitigating factor that has received less attention is education quality. If...

This paper presents the first critical review of literature on poverty published in Russia between 1992 and 2006. Using a dataset of about 250 publications in Russian scientific journals, the authors assess whether the poverty research in Russia satisfies the general criteria of a scientific...

Projects and reforms targeting infrastructure services can affect consumer welfare through changes in the price, coverage, or quality of the services provided. The benefits of improved service quality-while significant-are often overlooked because they are difficult to quantify. This paper...

The authors estimate the economic losses related to the negative effect of smoking on wages in a context of a developing country. Using data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Monitoring Survey, they jointly estimate a system of three equations: the smoking decision and two separate wage...

July 2000 - In Romania both the maternal decision to take a job and the decision to use out-of-home care are sensitive to the price of child care as well as to the potential market wage of the mother. A decrease in the price of child care can increase the number of mothers in the labor force and...

May 2000 - Prostitution is often called the world's oldest profession, yet economists almost never study it. The practice of safe sex by commercial sex workers is considered central to preventing the transmission of AIDS in developing countries - yet sex workers in Calcutta who regularly use...

March 2000 - Because of the decline in government assistance that accompanied economic reform in Russia, single mothers there - facing a greater risk of poverty - are increasingly choosing to live with other adults or relatives. Lokshin, Harris, and Popkin describe trends in single parenthood in...

This framework paper provides an overview of what matters most for school autonomy and accountability. The focus is on public schools at the primary and the secondary level. This paper begins by grounding School Autonomy and Accountability in its theoretical evidence base (impact evaluations,...

The SABER Service Delivery (SABER SD) survey instrument was developed as an initiative to uncover bottlenecks that inhibit student learning in low and middle-income countries and to better understand the quality of education service delivery in a country as well as gaps in policy implementation....