Abstract We investigate empirically the impact of maternal mortality on the enrolment rate of girls and boys at the primary and secondary levels. We also examine whether the effect of maternal mortality on enrolment is strengthened or weakened by religion. Evidence shows that at both the primary...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

In this paper we examine the impact of mandated reservations for female sarpanchs in the gram panchayats on perceptions of service delivery and women’s democratic participation. Using survey data from the Sangli district, Maharashtra, we find that the availability of basic, public services is...

A sizable literature claims that female labor force participation (FLFP) follows a U-shaped trend as countries develop due to structural change, education, and fertility dynamics. We show that empirical support for this secular trend is feeble and depends on the data sources used, especially GDP...

Donors of foreign aid increasingly claim to consider gender inequality in the recipient countries to be a serious concern. While aid specifically to promote gender equality receives only a tiny share of aid budgets, allocations to education, health, and c

Despite recent improvements in economic performance, undernutrition rates in Africa appear to have improved much less and rather inconsistently across the continent. We examine to what extent there is an empirical linkage between income growth and reductions of child undernutrition in Africa. We...

This paper uses the gravity model of trade to investigate the effect of foreign aid on exports of aid recipients to donor countries. Most of the theoretical work emphasises the possible negative impact of aid on recipient countries’ exports, primarily due to exchange rate appreciation,...

China committed itself to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy (the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP) by 40?45% during 2005?2020. Yet, between 2002 and 2009, China experienced a 3% increase in carbon intensity, though trends differed greatly among its 30 provinces. Decomposition...

This article proposes a simple and fast approach to build simultaneous confidence bands and perform specification tests for smooth curves in additive models. The method allows for handling of spatially heterogeneous functions and its derivatives as well as heteroscedasticity in the data. It is...

This study uses variables from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Centre's Gender, Institutions and Development (GID) Database to construct the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and its subindices <italic>Family code, Civil liberties, Physical integrity, Son...</italic>