There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations — which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates — and executive organizations — which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. Ministries of finance/planning/budgeting allocate across...

This paper points to the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies. Much of the problem is conceptual, since there is very little agreement on what constitutes high-quality government. The paper suggests four approaches: (1)...

In this paper we examine how policymakers and practitioners should interpret the impact evaluation literature when presented with conflicting experimental and non-experimental estimates of the same intervention across varying contexts. We show three things. First, as is well known,...

The Millennium Villages Project is a high profile, multi-country development project that has aimed to serve as a model for ending rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The project became the subject of controversy when the methodological basis of early claims of success was questioned. The...

Adolescent fertility in low- and middle-income countries presents a severe impediment to development and can lead to school dropout, lost productivity, and the intergenerational transmission of poverty. However, there is debate about whether adolescent pregnancy is a problem in and of itself or...

In post-conflict Liberia, the National Health Plan set out a process for transitioning from emergency to sustainability under government leadership. The Liberia Health Sector Pool Fund, which consists of DfID, Irish Aid, UNICEF, and UNHCR, was established to fund this plan and mitigate this...

Oil and other mineral rents are, in most countries, owned by producing states on behalf of their citizens. The paper focuses on three questions. First, how should countries take into account the great uncertainty over future export prices in planning their spending programs? Second, how should...

Past research on aid and growth is flawed because it typically examines the impact of aggregate aid on growth over a short period, usually four years, while significant portions of aid are unlikely to affect growth in such a brief time. We divide aid into three categories: (1) emergency and...

The global community faces a number of critical challenges ranging from climate change to crossborder health risks to natural-resource scarcities. Many of these so-called global commons problems carry grave risks to economic growth in the developing world and to the livelihoods and welfare of...

The combination of relatively high American barriers to trade in textiles and apparel and the importance of the sector to the Pakistani economy make increased market access a potentially powerful tool of U.S. policy. Unfortunately, recent proposals to extend duty-free market access for Pakistani...