This paper considers a conditional cash transfer program targeting poor households in small rural villages and studies the effects of the geographic proximity between villages on individual enrollment decisions. Exploiting variations in the treatment status across contiguous villages generated...

Investment in land administration projects is often considered key for agricultural productivity and rural development. The evidence on such interventions is however remarkably mixed. This paper discusses a number of challenges and derives related guidelines for the impact evaluation of land...

Is there any relation between education and democracy? Once we correct for weak instruments and identify education as "weakly exogenous" we find new evidence that education systematically predicts democracy. Our results are robust across model specification, instrumentation strategies, and samples.

Money is used as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Most recent analyses of currency choice in an international setting have focused on the denomination of reservesthe store of value role. However, public data are only aggregate and exclude several countries. This...

Why would bilateral donors intermediate aid through a multilateral and not extend aid directly? This paper suggests a trade-off: multiple bilateral donors for each recipient may imply coordination and strategic problems but intermediating through a multilateral may dilute individual donor...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

The literature on aid effectiveness has focused more on recipient policies than the determinants of aid allocation yet a consistent result is that political allies obtain more aid from donors than non-allies. This paper shows that aid allocated to political allies is ineffective for growth,...

Why would bilateral donors intermediate aid through a multilateral and not extend aid directly? This paper suggests a trade-off: multiple bilateral donors for each recipient may imply coordination and strategic problems but intermediating through a multilateral may dilute individual donor...