We review empirical evidence on the ability of decentralization to enhance preference matching and technical efficiency in the provision of health and education in developing countries. Many influential surveys have found that the empirical evidence of decentralization's effects on service...

The authors explore the effects of decentralization on education and health in Ethiopia using an original database covering all of the country's regions and woredas (local governments). Ethiopia is a remarkable case in which war, famine and chaos in the 1970s-1980s were followed by...

What is decentralization, what is its underpinning rationale, and why might it matter for least-developed countries? This chapter has two goals: (i) to distill the enormous academic and policy literature on international experiences of decentralization into clear empirical conclusions; and (ii)...