Browsing HKS Center for International Development by Title
Now showing items 322-341 of 580
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Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Euro Area
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2018-02)Macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area periphery was more recessionary than pre-crisis imbalances would have warranted. To make this claim, this paper uses a Propensity Score Matching Model to produce counterfactuals ... -
Macroeconomic risks after a decade of microeconomic turbulence
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2022-01)This study analyses the performance of macroeconomic policy in South Africa in 2007–2020 and outlines challenges for policy in the coming decade. After remarkable economic growth in 1997–07, South Africa’s progress slowed ... -
Maintaining Local Public Goods
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2013-11)Political Scientists have produced a substantial body of theory and evidence that explains variation in the availability of local public goods in developing countries. Existing research cannot explain variation in how these ... -
Managing for Motivation as Public Performance Improvement Strategy in Education & Far Beyond
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2022-03)People management has an important role to play in improving public agency performance. This paper argues that a ‘Route Y’ managerial approach focused on supporting the empowered exercise of employee judgment will in many ... -
Managing the Remaining Commons: Challenges to Sustainability in the Brazilian Northeast
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2008-12)Common grazing fields tend to disappear in the world. In Brazil, the fundos de pasto (FP) are one of the most important remaining areas to be used under this use regime as common grazing and extraction areas. Threats to ... -
Managing the Risks of Mobile Money: The Banking Agent Reform in Kenya A Scenario-Based Policy Analysis
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2010-04)Kenya is about to embark on an important reform to expand banking to millions of poor households by enabling third-party retail agents as a low-cost distribution alternative to branches. However, this initiative risks being ... -
Managing Your Authorizing Environment in a PDIA Process
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016-01)Development and state building processes are about change. Change is, however, elusive in many contexts. In prior work, we have offered problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) as an approach to tackle wicked hard change ... -
Many Children Left Behind? Textbooks and Test Scores in Kenya
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2007-08)A randomized evaluation suggests that a program which provided official textbooks to randomly selected rural Kenyan primary schools did not increase test scores for the average student. In contrast, the previous literature ... -
Mapping Peer Learning Initiatives in Public Sector Reforms in Development
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2015-04)The origins of this work lie in the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness conference in Busan and its call for a less didactic, “one size fits all” point of entry to improving state capacity (Various, 2011). The ... -
Market Inefficiencies and the Adoption of Agricultural Technologies in Developing Countries
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2011-05)This paper summarizes selected research on market inefficiencies that constrain agricultural technology adoption and how these inefficiencies can be overcome. In developing country settings, agricultural technologies that ... -
Mauritius: African Success Story
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2012-04)Mauritius is a top performer among African countries. It developed a manufacturing sector soon after independence and has managed to respond well to new external shocks. What explains this success? This paper draws on the ... -
A Measure of Countries' Distance to Frontier Based on Comparative Advantage
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2022-09)This paper presents a structural ranking of countries by their distance to frontier. The ranking is based on comparative advantage. Hence, it reveals information on the productive capabilities of countries that is fundamentally ... -
Measuring the Contribution of Criminal Justice Systems to the Control of Crime and Violence: Lessons from Jamaica and the Dominican Republic
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2007-04)Governments facing high levels of crime and violence must act through their criminal justice systems to increase safety while delivering justice. To do this rigorously, governments need to improve their measurement tools. ... -
Measuring the Economic Impact of Civil War
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2000-06)Civil wars impose substantial costs on the domestic economy. We empirically measure the economic impact of such internal wars. The paper contributes to the existing literature both theoretically and methodologically. First, ... -
Measuring Venezuela Emigration with Twitter
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2018-05)Venezuela has seen an unprecedented exodus of people in recent months. In response to a dramatic economic downturn in which inflation is soaring, oil production tanking, and a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding, many ... -
Medicines as Global Public Goods: The Historical Evolution of and Contemporary Debates on Technological Innovation for Global Health
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2009-05)The development of new technologies to combat disease, whether drugs, diagnostics, vaccines, or other health tools, has long been an important part of public health efforts. This paper traces the evolution over the past ... -
Melons as Lemons: Asymmetric Information, Consumer Learning and Seller Reputation
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2021-03)There is often a lack of reliable quality provision in many markets in developing countries and firms generally lack a reputation for quality. One potential explanation is that mistrust due to past bad behavior can make ... -
Micro-Economic Approaches to Evaluating the Burden of Malaria
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2003-04)The links between malaria and poverty are both obvious and subtle. While the correlation between the two is apparent, directions and mechanisms of causation are less so, and different methodological approaches to understanding ... -
The Middle Productivity Trap: Dynamics of Productivity Dispersion
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2017-09)Using a worldwide firm-level panel dataset I document a "U-shaped" relationship between productivity growth and baseline levels within each country and industry. That is, fast productivity growth is concentrated at both ... -
Migrant Investors and the Technological Advantage of Nations
(Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2020-02)We investigate the relationship between the presence of migrant inventors and the dynamics of innovation in the migrants’ receiving countries. We find that countries are 25 to 60 percent more likely to gain advantage in ...