The ad valorem tariff rateson specific products and the ratio of tariff revenue to import value, the collected rate, are only tenuously related, contend the authors. Using tariff and revenue data (at the tariff code line level of detail) for three developing countries, the authors compare the...

This report is about the fiscal performance of rural local governments in the state of West Bengal. Specifically, our goal is to develop a comprehensive fiscal information system for all rural local governments, and to use these data to valuate the intergovernmental finance structure in the...

The incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010). Two phenomena reinforce persistent failure of schooling systems to produce adequate...

Learning profiles, that track changes in student skills per year of schooling, often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow...