Over 755 million adults worldwide are unable to read and write in any language. Yet the widespread introduction of information and communication technology offers new opportunities to provide standardized distance education to underserved illiterate populations in both developed and developing...

Middle class values have long been perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. In this paper we investigate the relation between class (measured by the position in the income distribution), values, and political orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin American...

Conditional and unconditional cash transfers often help improve development outcomes, yet their costs to program recipients and implementing agencies are rarely discussed. Mobile money transfer systems in many developing countries now offer more cost-effective implementation of cash transfer...

Much of the growth in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade has come from extractive industries, rather than from private, entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, non-extractive activity in the private sector is often dominated by firms owned by ethnic minorities. This paper analyzes the...

This paper addresses two important economic issues for Africa: the contribution of national borders and ethnicity to market segmentation and integration between and within countries. Market pair regression analysis provides evidence of higher conditional price dispersion for both a grain and a...

The establishment of the UK Department for International Development in 1997, and the evolution of the UK’s foreign aid policies, has provoked international interest as a possible model for other countries to follow. The UK now combines in a single government department not only the delivery...

The international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7% of their national income to development assistance has become a cause célèbre for aid activists and has been accepted in many official quarters as the legitimate target for aid budgets. The origins of the target, however, raise serious...

This paper analyzes the determinants of firms’ decision to provide HIV/AIDS prevention activities. Using data from 860 firms and 4,955 workers in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, it shows that larger firms, and firms with higher skilled workers tend to invest more in AIDS prevention. Firms where...