This paper evaluates how Vietnam's Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program, an educational reform for primary schools supported by the World Bank, affected the cognitive (mathematics and Vietnamese) and non-cognitive (socioemotional) skills of students in that country. We use propensity score matching to...

Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam performed much better than all other developing countries, and even ahead of wealthier countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments. We provide a rigorous investigation of Vietnam's strong...

This paper studies how wealth and health inequalities have interacted with the Covid-19 epidemic in a way that has reinforced inequalities in income, savings, epidemic risk and even individual preventive behaviors. We present in more detail two papers and their theoretical and empirical results....

Despite a vast literature documenting the negative effects of climate change on various socio-economic outcomes, surprisingly hardly any evidence exists on the global impacts of hotter temperature on poverty. Analyzing a new global dataset of subnational poverty in 166 countries, we find higher...

Despite a vast literature documenting the negative effects of climate change on various socio-economic outcomes, little, if any, evidence exists on the global impacts of hotter temperature on poverty. Analyzing a new global dataset of subnational poverty in 166 countries, we find higher...

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havocs on economies around the world. Yet, barely any evidence currently exists on the distributional impacts of the pandemic. We provide the first study that offers new theoretical and empirical evidence on the distributional impacts of the pandemic on...

Despite a rich literature studying the impact of inequality on policy outcomes, there has been limited effort to bring these insights into the debates about comparative support for government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We fill in this gap by analyzing rich survey data from six countries...

Despite a rich literature studying the impact of inequality on policy outcomes, there has been limited effort to bring these insights into the debates about comparative support for government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We fill in this gap by analyzing rich survey data from six countries...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recently adopted by the United Nations represent an important step to identify shared global goals for development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals are not as straightforward and easy to interpret as they appear on the surface. Review of...

Very few studies currently exist on the long-term impacts of schooling policies in developing countries. We examine the impacts-half a century later-of a mass education program conducted by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the occupied areas during the First Indochina War....