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This paper serves as a companion paper to the Economic Development and Institutions’ (EDI) White Paper “At the Intersection: A Review of Institutions in Economic Development” (Dal Bó and Finan, 2016). The White Paper reviewed nearly 200 publications from economics…

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…

This paper provides micro evidence for one mechanism behind the dramatically different political responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, namely how an increase in the perceived risk of Covid-19 among individuals stemming from past exposure to similar health crises generates citizen demand for containment measures.

Over the past 25 years, the government of Nepal implemented one of the most ambitious and comprehensive programs of decentralization of forest management in the world. This major institutional change resulted in the transfer of the management of almost 50%…

The EDI research programme has generated significant policy impacts, including changes to laws and national policies as a result of close engagement between researchers and government officials. This report by the Centre for Effective Global Action (CEGA) details the impact of our work throughout the globe.

Abstract: International donors and governments require contracting mechanisms that provide accountability in order to mitigate leakage and corruption in public infrastructure projects, especially when construction is outsourced to private sector contractors. This is an important goal because low-income countries spend…

One puzzling question that arises in connection with the spread of the virus SARS-CoV2 is why there are so large variations in its incidence (the infection rate) and its lethal consequences (the death-toll) across countries and across regions within countries….

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 11: Donor relations and sovereignty Abstract: As a sovereign country, Mozambique initially relied on international solidarity and managed its donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed some loss of agency for the government as it allowed donors…

An Institutional Diagnostic of Bangladesh: Introduction Chapter overview: Why an institutional diagnostic? Methodological approach to the Bangladesh institutional diagnostic and the organisation of this volume A brief overview of Bangladesh’s political history The difficult installation of democracy The era of…

Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 11: The Synthesis Chapter overview: Introduction Identifying institutional constraints in Bangladesh’s development A sketch of Bangladesh’s political history Successes and challenges of Bangladesh’s economic development Bangladesh’s institutional performance in global rankings Bangladesh’s institutional performance based on…

The vital importance of institutions for economic development is widely acknowledged in both the theoretical and empirical literature. Yet the precise nature of the relationship between the two is unclear: do ‘good’ institutions produce development, or does development lead to…

Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 4: The country institutional survey – experts’ opinions on institutions in Bangladesh Chapter Overview List of tables and figures Introduction The CIS in Bangladesh The survey: design of the questionnaire Execution of the survey Critical institutional…

Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 3: A cross-country comparative analysis of institutional indicators: Where does Bangladesh stand? Chapter Overview List of tables and figures Introduction Constructing synthetic institutional indices Bangladesh’s position in the global ranking of synthetic institutional indices How does…

Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 2: Bangladesh’s Development: Achievements and Challenges Chapter Overview: List of tables and figures Introduction Sources of growth and possible limitations of the present development regime  Aggregate growth Structural transformation Remittances and foreign direct investment Infrastructure Bangladesh…

Value-added tax systems across the world are afflicted with size-dependent regulations.The benefit of such regulations to the tax authority is unclear. In this paper, we use an administrative dataset from the state of Delhi in India to first show that…

Countries where courts are weak, and rights are poorly enforced, tend to be countries with worse economic outcomes (Pande and Udry, 2006; Rodrik, 2000, 2005). To better understand the relationship between the functioning of judicial systems and economic growth, Dal…

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on aspirations in economics, with a particular focus on socially determined aspirations. The core theory builds on two fundamental principles: (a) aspirations can serve to inspire, but still higher aspirations can lead to frustration…

Sylvie Lambert (Paris School of Economics), Garance Genicot (Georgetown University), and Markus Goldstein (World Bank) discuss the significance of ensuring land rights to economic activity in the agricultural sectory in the Congo Basin, how securing land rights for women is…

Economic Development & Institutions programme is developing a diagnostic framework that will help identify the institutional challenges a country faces in boosting development and economic outcomes, and as such highlights where efforts should be spent to enhance development activities. Francois…

This paper reviews and discusses the literature on formal institutions and development. We first discuss the mapping from institutions to economic development, with the main emphasis on the effect on economic growth. We thereafter discuss two main literatures on endogenous…

The paper surveys the very heterogeneous economic literature on the scope and limits of efforts to match institutional constraints and needs, on the one hand, and infrastructure policy and project designs, on the other, to increase the odds of improving…

Environmental problems may be classified by the scale of the relevant externalities. Some externalities are primarily local, for example, those concerning the management of resources like forests, pastures and inland fisheries, or local air and water pollution. Others are mainly regional…

This paper reviews the channels through which the media can be a tool of institutional development, building the argument in two parts. First I focus on the media as a tool for accountability: by providing information on candidates ex ante,…