Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (37)
Working Paper
pdf
– An Alternative Approach to Theory, Measurement and Practice
The coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world’s ‘fragile and conflict-affected states’—beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations—turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given country, at any given historical moment, deemed to...
Working Paper
pdf
Many public sector reforms in developing countries fail to make governments more functional. This is typically because reforms introduce new solutions that do not fit the contexts in which they are being placed. This situation reflects what has recently been called the ‘capability trap’ in...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper presents the case of World Bank support to the mass titling component of the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project. This was a project for which there was clear national demand, as evidenced by the fact that the Cambodian government had already attempted to implement mass...
Working Paper
pdf
– Concepts, with Examples from India
The 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). Two phenomena reinforce persistent failure of schooling systems to produce adequate...
Working Paper
pdf
– A Reform Case for Instruction
The city of Medellín, Colombia was a cauldron of violence with 185 homicides per 100,000 people in 2002. By 2006, this rate had declined to 32.5. Such successful transformation was termed the ‘Medellín miracle’ and credited to policies of the city’s mayor, Sergio Fajardo. Fajardo came to office in...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Road from the Paris Declaration to the Reality of Juba, 2005-11
During Sudan’s ‘interim period’ from the end of civil war in January 2005 until South Sudan’s independence in July 2011, foreign development agencies provided extensive support and billions of dollars in aid—for which institutional development and capacity building of the nascent Government of...
Working Paper
pdf
– Building a State with Disruptive Innovation
The prevailing aid orthodoxy works well enough in stable environments, but is ill-equipped to navigate contexts of volatility and fragility. The orthodox approach is adept at solving straightforward technical or logistical problems (paving roads, building schools, immunizing children), but often...
Working Paper
pdf
Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibit such positive deviance. These theories are...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are ‘best in class’ in Africa (and beyond). The problem is that many of the...
Working Paper
pdf
Rising standards for accurately inferring the impact of development projects has not been matched by equivalently rigorous procedures for guiding decisions about whether and how similar results might be expected elsewhere. These ‘external validity’ concerns are especially pressing for ‘complex’...
Working Paper
pdf
‘Leadership’ is not a common topic for research in international development. In recent years, however, prominent studies like the 2008 Growth Commission Report noted the importance of leadership in development. This and other studies focused on individual leaders—or heroes—when examining ‘who leads...
Working Paper
pdf
– Ten Cases, Two Competing Explanations, One Large Research Agenda
Governments can play great roles in their countries, regions, and cities; facilitating or leading the resolution of festering problems and opening new pathways for progress. Examples are more numerous than one might imagine and raise an important question: ‘how do governments become great?’. This...
Working Paper
pdf
– a Building Without a Foundation?
This paper argues that attempts at state-building in Afghanistan have led to institutions that are not robust. The state institutions and organizations continue to be highly dependent on external resources and technical expertise, and lack of critical mass of people able and willing to maintain them...
Working Paper
pdf
– Using Structured Experiential Learning (‘e’) to Crawl the Design Space
There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations—which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates—and executive organizations—which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. Ministries of finance/planning/budgeting allocate across ministries and projects...
Working Paper
pdf
Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. The flow...
Working Paper
pdf
– Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation
In many nations today the state has little capability to carry out even basic functions like security, policing, regulation or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term task. Countries like Haiti or Liberia will take many decades to reach even a...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper analyses the trends in within-country inequality during the post-World War II period, with particular attention to the last 20 years, on the basis of a review of the relevant literature and of an econometric analysis of inequality trends in 73 countries accounting for 80 per cent of the...
Working Paper
pdf
Inequality has risen in many countries over the last two decades, especially in the transition economies, but also in many developing and developed economies. This is disturbing since little progress can be made in poverty reduction when inequality is high and rising. Moreover, contrary to earlier...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence and Interpretation
Until recently, the literature on income inequality within countries suggested that trends in this area had remained stable over the last few decades, and that there is no relation between changes in inequality on the one side and domestic and external liberalization on the other. Against this...
Working Paper
pdf
This study evaluates the impact of the over seventy Social Funds (SFs) which were introduced since the mid-1980s to offset the surge in poverty spurred by adjustment. SFs benefited from greater visibility and financial support by the donor community than traditional social security programmes, and...
Working Paper
pdf
As seen from the year 2001, economic policy in developing and post-socialist economies during the preceding 10-15 years had one dominating theme - external 'liberalization' or the drastic lowering or removal of long-standing barriers to almost all international transactions in markets for goods and...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper reviews income distribution in developing (and transition) countries in recent decades. On average, before-tax income distribution is less unequal in developing countries than it is in industrial countries. However, unlike industrial countries, developing countries in general have not...
Working Paper
pdf
– A Critical Analysis
Much of the vast literature on changes in income distribution in advanced countries during the last two decades attributes these either to globalization (specifically in the form of trade liberalization with low-wage developing countries), or to skill-biased technology, or to a combination of the...
Working Paper
pdf
– What Are the New Insights after the Washington Consensus?
The economic reform policies in the 1980s and the 1990s under the so-called Washington Consensus have recently led to growing concern for inequality. This paper looks at some of the labour market outcomes of the economic reform policies in terms of inequality. The paper argues that labour market...
Working Paper
pdf
In this paper we propose to measure the inequality of educational achievements by constructing a Gini index on educational attainments. We then use the proposed measure to analyse the relationship between inequality in incomes and educational achievements (in terms of both the average attainments...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Experience of Thailand
The impressive economic growth record of Thailand before 1997 was dominated by the increasing importance of modem industrialization, as well as the expansion of other sectors. This occurred at the expense of agriculture, which accounts for the largest employment pool. At the same time, the country...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Turkey
This study attempts to investigate and assess the impact of financial liberalization and the ongoing rise of financial rents on income distribution in the post-1980 Turkish economy. Our quantitative investigation of the dynamics of macroeconomic development over this period discloses an overall...
Working Paper
pdf
– Accounting for the Evolution of Venezuelan Inequality
This paper studies the evolution of Venezuelan inequality since 1970. It finds a striking increase in Venezuelan inequality that has been due mainly to the rise in capital's share of GDP. It shows that the increase can be traced back to the coupling of a collapse in the ratio of physical to human...
Working Paper
pdf
– Has Liberalization Helped?
This study examines the empirical relationship among inequality, poverty and economic growth in India. Using data on consumption from the 13th to the 53rd Rounds of the National Sample Survey, the author computes, for both rural and urban sectors, the Gini coefficient and three popular measures of...
Working Paper
pdf
The dispersion of racial incomes in South Africa has been declining since the mid 1970s. This has been accompanied by rising within-group inequality, especially amongst blacks, driven by growing unemployment. Consequently, there has been little improvement in aggregate indicators of inequality. In...
Working Paper
pdf
Increased Income Inequality in OECD Countries and the Redistributive Impact of the Government Budget
The recent rise in inequality in the distribution of disposable income in many, although not all, countries has led to a search for explanations, particularly since for much of the postwar period falling inequality has been the norm. In OECD countries, the cause has typically been identified as...
Working Paper
pdf
While unequal land ownership has a role to play in explaining historically high levels of income inequality, this paper asks what role agrarian structure plays in explaining contemporary trends of increasing income inequality. Using a Gini decomposition framework to structure the analysis and...
Displaying 32 of 37 results