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Publications (68)
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– Landholding patterns and women’s low work participation rates in West Bengal, India
Compared with most other Indian states, women’s reported work participation rates have historically been low in West Bengal. This trend is more prominent in rural areas. Historians have tried to explain this phenomenon in terms of culture and the ideology of domesticity.While persisting cultural...
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– A comparison across different selection models
This study focuses on estimating the returns to education in non-farm self-employed businesses in the Indian context, using nationwide individual- and household-level data provided by the India Human Development Survey for the year 2011/12. Given that different studies have used different types of...
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– A regression discontinuity approach
This paper estimates returns to schooling in Thailand, applying a regression discontinuity approach to the change in the compulsory schooling law in 1978. This law helped to enhance human capital investment on the eve of rapid structural transformation. The returns to schooling based on our...
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– Evidence from Sierra Leone
Using data from Sierra Leone, I explore the role of cognitive ability in sorting across sectors and the importance of perceptions in the employment decision-making process. Crucial to the analysis is the introduction of the aid-industry/development sector as a ‘third sector’, which is shown to be...
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– When manufacturing is jobless and services are tradable
Globalization and robotics (globotics) are transforming the world economy at an explosive pace since they are driven by digital technology that is advancing in phenomenal increments. This paper—which should be considered a ‘thought piece’—argues that the globotics transformation is likely to disable...
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– The role of infrastructure development and gender norms
Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration—if they are...
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– Revisiting the evidence
As research on the empirical link between aid and growth continues to grow, it is time to revisit the accumulated evidence on aid effectiveness. This paper does this by building on the meta-analysis in our previous work. The availability of more data enables us to conduct a sub-group analysis by...
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This paper presents a synopsis of the contextual conditions, factors and challenges under which the recent evolution of tax systems has taken place over the past three decades. The paper gives especial emphasis to the role of natural endowments, political economy, social structure and history, and...
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The governance of natural resource wealth is widely considered to constitute a key determinant in whether the extraction of natural resources proves to be a blessing or a curse. What is meant by governance can span a wide range of components, while the steps to achieving good governance remain...
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– The recent Ghanaian experience
This paper analyses the evolution of fiscal and monetary variables in Ghana, from the discovery of oil in 2007 through to 2014. It documents the deterioration of fiscal and monetary discipline over this period, which resulted in a rebound of debt, a deterioration of the external balance, and a...
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– The ICTD/UNU-WIDER GRD 2017
The Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) was launched in September 2014 and, in the few years since, has gone on to be recognized as the go-to source for researchers and policy makers seeking cross-country data on government revenues and taxes. However, as with any such project, successive rounds of...
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– Some practical observations from Ghana
At the heart of an effective extractive resource-based economic transformation and development is an effective regulatory framework that guides the promotion of investments into the sector, the procedure for responsible extraction, and the management of the utilization of such resources. Ghana’s...
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– Assessing the major replenishments of 2016
This survey of the 2016 replenishments of three multilateral development bank soft funds and of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria shows that a significant re-set of the multilateral development finance system is taking place, with grant funding from traditional donors generally in decline...
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Natural resources extraction inevitably imposes environmental injuries including diversion of scarce water away from pressing local needs, disruption of fragile ecosystems, and longer-range and often irreparable harm. These fall most forcefully on the local populations at or near the extraction...
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– Evidence from an insurgency in India
India has employed a variety of military, political, and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural breaks in the time series for violence over the...
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– New African oil, gas, and mining economies
This paper examines a broad range of opportunities for addressing the pressing human development needs of low-income countries by using new oil, gas, and mineral discoveries. It assesses how much of an impact can be made on the funding gaps for health and education by new oil and gas revenues, and...
Displaying 16 of 68 results