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Policy Brief
Working Paper
Affirmative action and effort choice: An experimental investigationWe study the effect of affirmative action on effort in an experiment conducted in high schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Queensland, Australia...
Field experiments Public administration Public policy (Law)Working Paper
Introduction to the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury firm-level panelThe South African Revenue Service and National Treasury Firm-Level Panel is an unbalanced panel data set created by merging several sources of administrative tax data received during 2015...
Business tax Public administration TaxationWorking Paper
Total factor productivity in South African manufacturing firmsThe manufacturing sector is an important source of productivity growth and exports. Manufacturing firms are generally more productive than firms in the agricultural or services sectors and are an important source of job creation...
Business Manufacturing ProductivityJournal Special Issue
Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing CountriesFor more than two decades, addressing constraints to better governance in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community...
Economic assistance and foreign aid Education PlanningJournal Article
Designing Effective Civil Service Reform Lessons from Past ExperiencePart of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
International agencies Corruption Public administrationJournal Article
Assessing the Impact of Regulatory Reform in Developing CountriesPart of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Economic policy Public administrationJournal Article
Developing and Evaluating Governance Indexes: 10 QuestionsRecent years have seen a proliferation of composite indicators or indexes of governance and their use in research and policy-making. This article proposes a framework of 10 questions to guide both the development and evaluation of such indexes...
Index numbers (Economics) Public administration Qualitative research methodologyWorking Paper
The Risks to Education Systems from Design Mismatch and Global Isomorphism: Concepts, with Examples from IndiaThe incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010)...
Education Public administrationJournal Article
Escaping Capability Traps Through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)Many development initiatives fail to improve performance because they promote isomorphic mimicry—governments change what they look like, not what they do...
Economic development Economic policy Public administrationBlog
Getting into a State?
30 October 2013 Roger Williamson The UNU-WIDER meeting held last week in New York on the topic of fragility and aid argued forcefully that you cannot ‘fix’ failed states as you would a broken window...
Agriculture Budget Conflict managementWorking Paper
Explaining Positive Deviance in Public Sector Reforms in DevelopmentPublic sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures...
Bureaucracy Economic development Economic growthWorking Paper
Overcoming the Limits of Institutional Reform in UgandaThis paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa...
Administrative law Government accountability Institutional economicsResearch Brief
The Development Process – Escaping the Capability TrapCurrent development practice focuses too much on the form institutions take, at the expense of worrying about function...
Economic development Economic policy Public administrationWorking Paper
Evaluating Governance Indexes: Critical and Less Critical QuestionsRecent years have seen a proliferation of ‘composite indicators’ or ‘indexes’ of governance...
Index numbers (Economics) Public administration Qualitative research methodologyBlog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2013)
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
Decision making (Finance, Public) Econometric models (Economic development) Agriculture