This paper evaluates the impact of strengthening legal rights on the types of economic opportunities pursued. Ethiopia changed its family law, expanding wives’ access to marital property and removing restrictions to working outside the home. This reform was initially rolled out in the two...

Many development initiatives fail to improve performance because they promote isomorphic mimicry—governments change what they look like, not what they do. This article proposes a new approach to doing development, Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), which contrasts with standard...