What is the impact of modern transportation technology on long-run economic change in poor countries with high trade costs?  Rail construction in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa provides a natural experiment: 90% of African rail-road lines were built before independence, in a context where...

This paper investigates the role of risk-aversion in the allocation of workers between formal and informal jobs in Ghana.  In the model I propose risk-averse workers can opt between the free-entry informal sector and queuing for formal occupations.  Conditional on identifying the riskier...

Using data from a randomized control trail in Sri Lanka, this paper explores whether cash and in-kind grants helped microenterprises approach the productivity level of SMEs.  The paper first estimates production functions and subsequently treatment effects on TFP levels.  Most significantly,...

This paper draws further attention to the importance of taking into account off-budget aid when estimating the degree of foreign aid fungibility.  It does so by re-evaluating the results of a recent, influential paper which concluded that health aid is fully fungible in the long run.  Allowing...

Substandard teaching is believed to be the foremost reason for poor quality schooling in the developing world.  This paper uses unique data from primary schools in the state of Punjab in Pakistan to delve into the issues that may determine what makes one teacher more effective than another. ...

Expansion in mobile phone coverage has improved access to information throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa.  The existing evidence suggests that information technology has improved market efficiency and reduced consumer prices for certain commodities.  There...

This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over both the short and very long run.  Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865-1940 and 1960-2007.  A single equation...

We quantify the extent to which public-sector employment crowds out private-sector employment using specially assembled datasets for a large cross-sector of developing and advanced countries.  Regressions of either private-sector employment rates or unemployment rates on two measures of...

This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models.  Using an array of different data, we document that African banking systems are...

We study the impact of growth and growth accelerations on poverty and inequality in Indonesia using a new panel dataset covering 26 provinces over the period 1977-2010.  This new dataset allows us to distinguish between mining and non-mining sectors of the economy.  We find that growth in...