Data analytics technology can accelerate the innovation process by enabling existing knowledge to be identified, accessed, combined and deployed to address new problem domains. However, like prior advances in information technology, the ability of firms to exploit these opportunities depends on...

A rigorous understanding of the developmental effect of fiscal transfers to subnational governments remains an important policy research issue globally. This paper exploits a novel dataset of 20 years of municipal poverty maps and local public finances to study the effects on local welfare of a...

This paper investigates the local effects of mining on the quality of public services and on people's optimism about their future living conditions. It also assesses the mediating role of local institutions and local governments 'taxing rights in shaping the proximity-to-mine effects. The...

This paper analyzes how local leaders make targeting decisions in the context of a public workfare program in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The study finds that village heads are progressive in their targeting, prioritizing the poorer households in their villages. The study benchmarks...

In the early 1990s, a host of unitary states in Southeast Asia began pursuing, at their own pace, the process of decentralizing their systems of governance. The form and function of these reforms were documented in the World Bank's report, East Asia Decentralizes: Making Local Government Work,...

Pre-Euromaidan attempts to promote decentralization in Ukraine not only generated valuable evidence-based domestic expertise on how (and how not) to reform center-periphery relations. Russia’s exploitation of the structural incoherence of the Ukrainian state also demonstrated that it is...