A rich and growing literature illustrates the paradox of COVID-19 responses by governments across the world. States with higher levels of authority and capacity have struggled to respond effectively to COVID-19, while states with low capacity and authority have been more effective in containing...

This paper examines the effect of prior participation in early childhood developmental programs, considered endogenous, upon 7-19 years olds' school enrollment and grade progression in rural North India. It hopes both to extend to less developed countries recent influential research on the...

In India, a lack of accountability is considered the key reason for the failure of most development programs. Most poverty alleviation programs are riddled with inefficiency, absenteeism, incompetence, and corruption. This has resulted in poor service delivery, and to ordinary citizens losing...

Objective: To evaluate the quality of essential care during normal labour and childbirth in maternity facilities in Uttar Pradesh, India. Methods: Between 26 May and 8 July 2015, we used clinical observations to assess care provision for 275 mother-neonate pairs at 26 hospitals. Data on 42 items...

This paper aims to examine the challenges of expanding access to an affordable electricity supply for rural households by addressing the subsidies and cost recovery of the existing tariff policy in the context of Uttar Pradesh (UP), India. The study used household survey data to assess the...

We estimate the causal real economic effects of a randomized anticorruption crackdown on local governments in Brazil over the period 2003-2014. After anti-corruption audits, municipalities experience an increase in economic activity concentrated in sectors most dependent on government...

Decentralisation and local economic development (LED) are two major development strategies that both have an explicit or inexplicit focus on poverty reduction. Political decentralisation offers principally two channels that allow to better orient policies to the needs of the poor, either through...

Can the provision of public goods strengthen the fiscal capacity of governments in developing countries and move them toward an equilibrium of widespread tax compliance? We present evidence of the impact of local public infrastructure on tax compliance, leveraging a large public investment...

This text aims to analytically reflect on the decentralized execution process of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), especially after an innovation that occurred through Law No. 11.947/2009, with the requirement that all federative entities commit a minimum of 30% of financial transfers...

Decentralisation, which sends power and resources from the Central to local governments, comes with several theoretical promises. One such promise is the improvement in local service provision. However, achieving these theoretical promises of decentralization has been a big challenge in most...