Contrasting treatment‐specific survival using double‐robust estimators

In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators make unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities.

/pdf/missing-in-action-teacher-and-health-worker-absence-in-1v58idosni.pdf

Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries

This new research report analyzes community development and decentralization projects, shows that such projects often fail to be sensitive to complex contexts, including social, political, historical and geographical realities, and fall short in terms of monitoring and evaluation systems, which hampers learning. Citing numerous examples, including projects and programs supported by the World Bank, the authors demonstrate that participatory projects are not a substitute for weak states, but instead require strong central support to be effective. Promoting participation through community development projects and local decentralization has become a central tenet of development policy. The World Bank alone has invested about $85 billion over the last decade on development assistance for participation. However, some observers feel that policy making in the area is conceptually weak, that project design is informed more by slogans than careful analysis. There have also been questions about whether participatory development is effective in reducing poverty, improving service delivery, and building the capacity for collective action. Some observers also find that participatory projects are complex to implement and deeply affected by context, and are thus unsuited for large development institutions such as the World Bank. This groundbreaking report carefully examines each of these concerns. It outlines a conceptual framework for participation that is centered on the concept of civil society failure and how it interacts with market and government failures. The authors use this framework to understand the key policy debates surrounding participatory development and to frame the key policy questions. The report conducts the most comprehensive review of the evidence on the impact of participatory projects to date, looking at more than 400 papers and books. The report argues that participatory development is most effective when it works within a 'sandwich' formed by support from an effective central state and bottom-up civic action. This report represents an important contribution. It has significant implications for how to improve participation in development interventions and for development policy more broadly.

Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?

The Economic Effects of Constitutions. By Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003. 320p. $35.00.Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini have produced the most ambitious study yet that attempts to identify and estimate the effects of constitutional design on economic outcomes. They draw on data from more than 80 countries and control for demographic, historical, regional, and economic characteristics. The purpose is to determine whether the shape of political institutions has measurable impact on economic policies (e.g., fiscal balance, social welfare spending), on government performance (e.g., corruption indices, protection of property rights), and on direct measures of economic performance (e.g., productivity of capital and labor). The political institutions that draw the most attention are constitutional regime type and the method of electing legislators.

The Economic Effects of Constitutions

http://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/mjtier/moredollarsthansense

More Dollars than Sense: Refining Our Knowledge of Development Finance Using AidData

School enrollment has universally increased over the last 25 years in low-income countries. Enrolling in school, however, does not assure that children learn. A large share of children in low-income countries complete their primary education lacking even basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. Teacher quality is a key determinant of student learning, but not much is known about teacher quality in low-income countries. This paper discusses an ongoing research program intended to help fill this void. We use data collected through direct observations, unannounced visits, and tests from primary schools in seven sub-Saharan African countries to answer three questions: How much do teachers teach? What do teachers know? How well do teachers teach?

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/jep.31.4.185

Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa

In the public sector in developing countries, leakage of public resources could prove detrimental to users and affect the well-being of the population. This paper empirically examines the importance of leakage of government resources in the health sector in Chad, and its effects on the prices of drugs. The analysis uses data collected in Chad as part of a Health Facilities Survey organized by the World Bank in 2004. The survey covered 281 primary health care centers and contained information on the provision of medical material, financial resources, and medicines allocated by the Ministry of Health to the regional administration and primary health centers. Although the regional administration is officially allocated 60 percent of the ministry's non-wage recurrent expenditures, the share of the resources that actually reach the regions is estimated to be only 18 percent. The health centers, which are the frontline providers and the entry point for the population, receive less than 1 percent of the ministry's non-wage recurrent expenditures. Accounting for the endogeneity of the level of competition among health centers, the leakage of government resources has a significant and negative impact on the price mark-up that health centers charge patients for drugs.

Leakage of Public Resources in the Health Sector: An Empirical Investigation of Chad

The author investigates the determinants of foreign aid quality He shows that design effects are a crucial component of quality He thus establishes that donors have an impact on the quality of the foreign assistance they provide The author also shows both theoretically and empirically that the quality of aid is endogenous to the relationship between the donor agency and the recipient government Highly capable and accountable governments accept only well-designed projects, whereas governments with low accountability may accept poor quality projects either because they are unable to assess the worth of the projects or they will benefit personally

/pdf/the-quality-of-foreign-aid-country-selectivity-or-donors-52ra8frfy0.pdf

The Quality of Foreign Aid: Country Selectivity or Donors Incentives?

This paper investigates individuals' bypassing behavior in the health sector in Chad and the determinants of individuals' facility choice. The authors introduce a new way to measure bypassing using the patients' own knowledge of alternative health providers available to them instead of assuming that information as previously done. The authors analyze how perceived health care quality and prices impact patients' bypassing decisions. The analysis uses data from a Quantitative Service Delivery Survey in Chad's health sector carried out in 2004. The survey covers 281 primary health care centers and 1,801 patients. The matching of facility data and patient data allows the analysis to control for a wide range of important patient and facility characteristics, such as income, severity of illness, quality of health care, or price of services. The findings show that income inequalities translate into health service inequalities. There is evidence of two distinct types of bypassing activities in Chad: (1) patients from low-income households bypass high-quality facilities they cannot afford to go to low-quality facilities, and (2) rich individuals bypass low-quality facilities and aim for more expensive facilities that also offer a higher quality of care. These significant differences in patients' facility choices are observed across income groups as well as between rural and urban areas.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/4462.pdf?abstractid=1080477&mirid=3

Bypassing Health Providers: The Quest for Better Price and Quality of Health Care in Chad

/pdf/leakage-of-public-resources-in-the-health-sector-an-4w7lnfgqti.pdf

Waly Wane

Papers

Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa

Leakage of Public Resources in the Health Sector: An Empirical Investigation of Chad

The Quality of Foreign Aid: Country Selectivity or Donors Incentives?

Bypassing Health Providers: The Quest for Better Price and Quality of Health Care in Chad

Leakage of Public Resources in the Health Sector: An Empirical Investigation of Chad