Existing studies from the United States, Latin America, and Asia provide scant evidence that private schools dramatically improve academic performance relative to public schools. Using data from Kenya — a poor country with weak public institutions — we find a large effect of private...

Effective targeting of social policies and their rigorous evaluation requires relevant and accurate data. With the majority of the world's poor depending on agriculture and informal businesses for their livelihoods, information on these sectors is particularly valuable. I use high-frequency...

In many developing countries (and beyond), public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them -- so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are...