Scaling up early childhood development services has the potential to increase children's cognitive and socio-emotional development and promote school readiness in a large segment of the population. This study used a randomized controlled trial approach to evaluate three scaled-up programs...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and noncognitive abilities appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer...

This paper analyzes changes in the allocation of child labor within the household in reaction to exogenous shocks created by a social program in Nicaragua. The paper shows that households that randomly received a conditional cash transfer compensated for some of the intra-household differences,...

While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households'risk-management through income...

Interventions aimed at increasing the income generating capacity of the poor, such as vocational training, micro-finance or business grants, are widespread in the developing world. How to target such interventions is an open question. Many programs are self-targeted, but if perceived returns...

Low aspirations can limit households’ investments and contribute to sustained poverty. Vice versa, increased aspirations can lead to investment and upward mobility. Yet how aspirations are formed is not always well understood. This paper analyzes the role of social interactions in determining...

Mass media play a crucial role in information distribution and in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by the mass media reflects the media's incentives to provide news to different groups in society and affects these groups'influence in policy...

The agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational, while others have been gradual but persistent. This paper reviews and synthesizes...