Evidence is crucial in strategic planning for HIV response as well as the monitoring of results. This paper presents a simple tool that can be used to analyze the methodological quality of HIV data, its scope and limitations, and whether it can be accurately compared with other evidence. The...

There is a large body of research that explores international trade as a source of the dispersion in income levels and growth performances across countries. The trade liberalization policies undertaken between 1950 and 2006 led to an almost 30 fold growth in the volume of international trade....

There have been numerous episodes of widespread adoption of improved seed and long-term achievements in the development of the maize seed industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. This summary takes a circumspect view of technical change in maize production. Adoption of improved seed has continued to rise...

Using a novel dataset with transactions level exports data from four African countries (Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania), this paper uncovers evidence of a high degree of experimentation at the extensive margin associated with low survival rates, consistent with high and middle income country...

Institutional features of the African setting -- large extended families and imperfect credit and land markets -- matter to the equity and efficiency roles played by intergenerational linkages. Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, this...

Many different strategies have been proposed to improve the delivery of health care services, from capacity building to establishing new payment mechanisms. Recent attention has also asked whether improvements in the way health care services are governed could make a difference. These approaches...

In recent years, the number of studies looking at the effect of politics on economic outcomes has flourished. For developing economies, these studies are useful to better understand why long overdue reforms are not implemented. The studies analyze the overall context within which reforms are...

In the last decade Morocco undertook substantial, if gradual, trade liberalization by reducing tariffs, reforming trade regulations and signing free and preferential trade agreements with several regions and countries, including the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries....

Better insurance against rainfall risk could improve the security of hundreds of millions of agricultural households around the world. However, customers have shown little demand for stand-alone insurance products. This paper theoretically and experimentally analyzes an innovative financial...

Sex ratios at birth rose sharply in the South Caucasus countries after 1991, but recent data indicate that this trend is turning. What caused this rise, and what can be done to accelerate its normalization? Traditional kinship systems in the region are similar to those of other settings with...