The availability and quality of basic public services are important determinants of urban quality of life. In many cities, rapid population growth and fiscal constraints are limiting the extent to which urban governments can keep up with increasing demand for these services. It therefore becomes...

The youth unemployment rate is exceptionally high in developing countries. Because the quality of education is arguably one of the most important determinants of youth's labor force participation, governments worldwide have responded by creating job training and placement services programs....

This paper provides the first systematic empirical assessment of the pace at which housing investment has responded to rising demand from urbanization. The assessment used national accounts statistics to build a data set of residential housing investment for more than 90 countries. The data set...

This paper illustrates how the capabilities of GIS and satellite imagery can be harnessed to explore and better understand the urban form of several large African cities (Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, and Dakar). To allow for comparability across very diverse cities, this work...

Well-functioning cities reduce the economic distance between people and economic opportunities. Cities thrive because they enable matchmaking -- among people, among firms, and between people and job opportunities. This paper examines employment accessibility in Nairobi, Kenya and evaluates...

This paper examines the spatial organization of jobs in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, and applies the Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002) model to explain the observed patterns in terms of the agglomeration forces and the commuting costs of workers. The paper suggests that: (i) Economic...

Although several studies have examined why overall price levels are higher in richer countries, little is known about whether there is a similar relationship at the urban and city level across countries. This paper compares the price levels of cities in Sub-Saharan Africa with those of other...

Over the last century, the urban spatial structure of cities has transformed dramatically from the traditional monocentric configuration to varying forms of decentralized organization. This paper reviews the theory and empirical evidence to understand the urban morphology of jobs and land use...

The authors examine technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. The authors examine heterogeneity in firm-level...

This paper provides the first systematic empirical assessment of the pace at which housing investment has responded to rising demand from urbanization. The assessment used National Accounts Statistics to build a data set of residential housing investment for more than 90 countries. The data set...