Markets for consumer financial services are growing rapidly in low-and middle-income
countries and are being transformed by digital technologies and platforms. With growth and …

Recent years have seen rapid growth in the use of technology in social protection systems.
While the pace of adoption has varied between countries, the general trend of increasing …

We present results from a large-scale experimental evaluation of an ambitious attempt to
improve management quality in Indian schools (implemented in 1,774 randomly-selected …

We use a regression discontinuity design to study the impacts of a noncontributory pension
program covering one-third of Bolivian households during the COVID-19 pandemic …

We study the impact of reforms that introduced more stringent, biometric ID requirements into
India's largest social protection program, using large-scale randomized and natural …

More than two billion people globally live in smallholder farming households, comprising a
large proportion of the world's poor. Smallholder farm yields are estimated to reach only 25 …

Corrupt government hiring is common in developing countries. This paper uses original data
to document the operation and consequences of corrupt hiring in a health bureaucracy …

The paper examines how politics relates to public sector absenteeism, a chronic and
intractable public service delivery problem in many developing countries. In Punjab …

We evaluate a program in Pakistan that equips government health inspectors with a
smartphone app which channels data on rural clinics to senior policy makers. The system …

Distribution networks entrusted to run welfare programs can have enduring leakages due to
the expensive monitoring of agents at several echelons. This paper features a technological …