Resources from:
Policy Engagement

Authoritarian regimes often direct the course of electoral politics in ways that allow them to concentrate and consolidate power (Geddes, 1999; Svolik, 2012; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Gandhi, 2015). While a growing body of literature has devoted attention to studying…

Political selection can be crucial to the quality of governance. Yet our general knowledge of the individual characteristics that determine who becomes a politician remains scant – primarily due to data limitations. Dal Bo and Finan (2018) emphasize how the…

Over the past three decades, state control of media in Muslim countries has eroded rapidly, through the rise of multinational television networks such as Al Jazeera, the spread of radio services such as BBC World Service and Voice of America,…

Ugandan policy mandates periodic re-assignment of teachers between schools. We study whether rewarding high-performing teachers with posting to a preferred school improves teacher attendance, effort, and student performance. We find no effect on student and teacher outcomes. Results suggest that…

It is widely accepted that there are persistent performance differences (PPDs) among seemingly similar enterprises (Syverson, 2011). These differences are not only documented in developed markets (Syverson, 2004) but also in developing countries where they tend to be more pronounced…

How effectively are government bureaucracies managed? How much variation is there in management practices across organizations? These are basic questions about the day-to-day bureaucratic processes of governance on which little systematic evidence exists, especially in low- and middle-income countries. And…

Land ownership and inheritance rights play a critical role for gender equity, and the land-poverty nexus has drawn considerable attention both in academia and policy circles. This EDI Research Insight highlights key findings from research designed to build an understanding…

Urban armed groups, especially criminal gangs, are a growing threat to peace and economic growth in cities across the world, and often exert state-like powers such as enforcing contracts, policing, and taxing businesses. Gangs, mafias, and urban militias have turned…

This EDI Research Insight provides a summary of our initial findings from an EDI case study in Bangladesh, which was designed to test the hypothesis that formal laws can influence informal social norms and practices related to child marriage. To…

Inequality in access to land is often considered symptomatic of larger inequalities of opportunities in rural societies. Yet little is known about land access inequality in frontier settings where property rights have not fully transitioned from open access through communal…

There is a fast-growing literature on socially determined aspirations, and the implications of this concept for the study of goal-setting, interpersonal inequality, economic mobility, risk-taking, fertility decisions and social conflict. This EDI Research Insight briefly outlines the major themes emerging…

This EDI Policy Brief provides an accessible summary of key insights and findings from research for a case study on “Discretion versus rule-based budgeting and assignment in Indian governments“. Clientelism and vote buying are commonly mentioned symptoms of poor governance in…

This EDI Policy Brief provides an accessible summary of key insights and findings that are presented in the EDI Working Paper on “Community Origins of Industrial Entrepreneurship in Pre-Independence India.” It derives from a case study on the role community networks in…

Federico Finan, Associate Professor of Economics and Business at UC-Berkeley, introduces the EDI convening conference titled, “Sharing Strategies, Sharing Solutions: A Policy Institute for Innovations in Public Services.” The main goals of the event are to identify ways in which…

Charity Moore from the Harvard Kennedy School presents research from a project on “USing digital trails to improve management and accountability for public service delivery in India.” Service delivery in development settings in hierarchical in nature, which can lead to…

Kate Casey of Stanford University presents research to date from the project on “Politician entry, selection and performance in Sierra Leone.” How do political parties choose candidates who run in the general elections Political party have regional geographic strongholds, which…

Gianmarco León on pay-for-performance (P4P), which has been shown to be effective in job performance in both private and public organizations. The research examines how incentives affect performance when they are implemented across multiple layers of an organization – from…

Kate Vyborny presents her research on a project that explores how women in Pakistan can get access to the rights that they legally have. She looks particularly at the legal rights that are understood and established around marriage contracts. This…

Eric Arias from William & Mary College presents research from his field experiment in Colombia on community policing and public trust. Arias begins with the motivation for this research, which is centred on the premise that citizens’ trust and cooperation…

Virginia Nelder, from the Kenya Law Reform Commission, presents her research on “Access to justice in Kenya’s magistrates’ courts: Judicial systems as public goods.” The project she presents aims to provide the research necessary to make evidence-based policy and legislative…

Bilal Siddiqi from the World Bank presents his research on “Using administrative data systems to improve court efficiency (India, Kenya, Tanzania)”. Questions reviewed through this research include: How do disputes get reported? How is the quality of adjudication affected by…

Joyce Sadka from the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) presents her research on “Improving the Effectiveness of Labor Courts through Information and Conciliation” undertaken together with the courts in Mexico City. Sadka asks can informing plaintiffs and defendants about…

Shekhar Mittal, of the University of California at Berkeley, presents his research on the Value Added Tax (VAT) system in India. A key development concern is how to improve tax collections, which are central to building state capacity. Mittal examines…

Justine Knebelmann from the Paris School of Economics presents her research on a project undertaken in collaboration with the Senegalese tax administration. She reviews the motivations for research on the property tax regime, and examines how technological improvements in the…

Pierre Bachas from the World Bank presents on his EDI-funded research in Senegal on how to audit populations when there is limited government capacity. This presentation was part of a larger convening workshop for EDI, “Sharing Solutions, Sharing Strategies: A…

Ernesto Dal Bó, Professor in Management Philosophy and Values at UC Berkeley, and Benjamin Klooss, EDI Programme Manager at Oxford Policy Management, reflect on the EDI conference “Sharing Strategies, Sharing Solutions: A Policy Institute for Innovations in Public Services.” They…

This EDI Policy Brief provides an accessible summary of key insights and findings that are presented in the EDI Working Paper on “Community networks and the growth of private enterprise in China.” It derives from a case study on the…

A presentation by Erica Field and Kate Vyborny This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Aprajit Mahajan (UC Berkeley), Shekhar Mittal (UC Berkeley) and Ofir Reich (formerly CEGA) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of…

A presentation by Ernesto Dal Bó and Federico Finan, University of California, Berkeley This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.  

A presentation by Bilal Siddiqi, DIME, World Bank This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Andrew Zeitlin, Georgetown University This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

“Relaxing credit and tenure security constraints: Credit and land titling in Uganda” A presentation by Michael O’Sullivan (with contributions from Maitreesh Ghatak, Markus Goldstein, James Habyarimana, Joao Montalvao, Christopher Udry) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by…

A presentation by Gianmarco León (with Erika Deserrano and Philipp Kastrau) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

“Using administrative data systems to improve court efficiency (India, Kenya, Tanzania)” A presentation by Bilal Siddiqi, DIME, World Bank This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read…

“Improving the effectiveness of labor courts through information and conciliation” A presentation by Joyce Sadka, Enrique Seira and Chris Woodruff, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University…

A presentation by Edward Miguel, University of California, Berkeley This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Justine Knebelmann, Paris School of Economics This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

“Using digital trails to improve management and accountability for public service delivery (India)” A presentation by Charity Moore, Harvard Kennedy School This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August…

A presentation by Kate Casey, Stanford GSB This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Pierre Bachas (World Bank Research) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Eric Arias, William & Mary This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

Female Employment and Aspirations for Children: Evidence from Bangladesh’s Garment Industry This EDI Policy Brief provides insight into gender roles and aspirations for children among a sample of families involved with the Bangladeshi garment industry. It is based upon an…

This video provides an overview of the first year of the programme, where 23 path-findings papers were produced by world class academics that identified the research gaps and set the priorities for the remaining four years of EDI.

This policy brief reflects on the EDI Path-Finding Paper, “The dynamics of family systems: lessons from past and present time,” written by Catherine Guirkinger and Jean-Philippe Platteau. It exposes the main lessons from salient studies that have estimated the effects…

Catherine Guirkinger and Jean-Philippe Platteau discuss their findings based on their research on the dynamic aspects of family institutions. Their findings have also been published in the EDI Path-Finding Paper, ‘The Dynamics of Family Systems: lessons from past and present times‘.

A Policy Brief Prepared for the World Bank’s 2017 Law, Justice and Development Week October 2017. Economic inequalities divide men and women around the world. Women on average earn just 60-70% of what their male counterparts earn. They are less likely to participate…

This brief, based on Klasen’s path-finding paper titled ‘Gender, Institutions and Economic Development: Findings, Open Research and Policy Issues’ focuses on the way he treats gender gaps as the outcome of institutional features, formal and informal.  And on how formal institutions, informal…