In 2003 Kenya abolished user fees in all government primary schools. Analysis of household survey data shows this policy contributed to a shift in demand away from free schools, where net enrollment stagnated after 2003, toward fee-charging private schools, where both enrollment and fee levels...

The recent wave of randomized trials in development economics has provoked criticisms regarding external validity.  We investigate two concerns - heterogeneity across beneficiaries and implementers - in a randomized trial of contract teachers in Kenyan schools.  The intervention, previously...

Over the past decade, Kenya's traditional model of local, community finance and management of schools has been crowded out from two directions. First, the Kenyan government has expanded its role in public education, through free provision of primary and, more recently, secondary education....

The recent wave of randomized trials in development economics has provoked criticisms regarding external validity. We investigate two concerns – heterogeneity across beneficiaries and implementers – in a randomized trial of contract teachers in Kenyan schools. The intervention, previously...

We model the emergence of formal insurance institutions as equilibria under limited contract enforceability where groups are required to be coalition-proof but also can use fines for enforcement. The model can generate coexistence of formal and informal groups without requiring heterogeneity in...

This paper studies the development of indigenous insurance institutions set up to help cover the high costs of funerals, using evidence from rural areas in Tanzania and Ethiopia. Many of these institutions tend to co-exist within the same community and are based on well-defined rules and...

The existing literature on sub-game perfect risk-sharing suffers from a basic inconsistency. While a group of size "n" is able to coordinate on a risk-sharing outcome, it is assumed that deviating subgroups cannot. I relax this assumption and characterise the optimal contract among all...

The Delivering Service Indicators seek to provide a set of indices for benchmarking service delivery performance in education and health in Africa in order to track progress in and across countries over time. It seeks to enhance effective and active monitoring of service delivery systems and to...