Understanding the effects of the world’s largest workfare program
As the world’s largest workfare program, India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has attracted much attention. Yet its impacts on agriculture have been relatively...
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Got wings? Lessons on the survival of the skilled
In a recent exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, “Dinosaurs Among Us,” paleontologists use prehistoric fossil records of bones, feathers, and nests to show that some...
View ArticleSystem-wide education reform is hard – but it is possible
The elusive quest to scale Some 15 years ago, I was in a small town in Hoshangabad district (India) attending a workshop with government schoolteachers, where we were examining student test scores....
View ArticleAn Indian government effort to encourage account ownership produces...
Can government policies designed to promote financial inclusion encourage people to open an account at a bank or other financial institution?
View ArticlePro-market activism: A new role for the state in promoting access to finance
The debate on whether the state should play an active role in broadening access to finance or not is one that has lingered for decades. A recent book (de la Torre, Gozzi, and Schmukler, 2017) argues...
View ArticleInvisible walls? The incredible inertia of Indian men
That international borders limit migration is obvious. But why should provincial or state borders prevent people from moving within a country? After all, most countries do not impose restrictions on...
View ArticleDidn’t make it to our trade research conference? Here’s what you missed
What would bring together the China trade shock, road blocks in the West Bank, and the Belt and Road initiative? The 6th Annual IMF-World Bank-WTO Trade Research Conference, at which staff of the...
View ArticleGlobal poverty today, the 1908 winter in St. Petersburg, and ‘controversy bias’
Robert Allen’s recent AER paper on “Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire” is a fascinating read, on many levels. The paper uses linear programming (LP) to compute (four variants of)...
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The outlook for growth in South Asia in five charts: Robust prospects
South Asia’s growth prospects appear robust, with household consumption expected to remain strong, exports expected to recover, and investment projected to revive with the support of policy reforms and...
View ArticleWrong criticisms of Doing Business
Also available in: العربية | Español | Français | 中文 While I welcome criticism and comments on the Doing Business (DB) report—or any other data and research product of the World Bank, for that...
View ArticleClosing the gap between policy and practice on women’s land rights
Momentum is building behind a land rights revolution. Last year, just prior to the World Bank’s Annual Land and Poverty Conference, I wrote about the many factors pushing land to the top of the global...
View ArticleInterest rate caps: The theory and the practice
Ceilings on lending rates remain a widely-used instrument in many EMDEs as well as developed economies. The economic and political rationale for putting ceilings on lending rates is to protect...
View ArticleCapital account liberalization and controls: Structural or cyclical policy...
Capital flows to emerging market economies are deemed volatile, driven more by external than domestic factors. Surges in capital flows often generate macroeconomic imbalances in emerging markets,...
View ArticleMissing in action: Where is the “demand” for jobs when we prepare for jobs?
Are robots, friends or foes of the future of work? Automation is eliminating some routine jobs but, on the positive side, robots are good partners for workers engaged in tasks that demand analytical,...
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Oral democracy
The challenges of electoral democracy are becoming increasingly visible worldwide. Elite capture, corruption and patronage are serious concerns, and the legitimacy of some elections has come under...
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