International development

Can consumption taxes reduce inequality in developing countries?

This paper provides new evidence on how effectively piped water consumption subsidies are targeting poor households in 10 low- and middle-income countries around the world.

This brief addresses the fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that governments could make use of the opportunities this shock provides to make changes to tax systems now that might be politically difficult later.

Nearly one-quarter of married, fertile-age women in Sub-Saharan Africa say that they want to avoid pregnancy but are not using contraceptives.

We examine how the effects of incentivizing individuals to use healthcare depend on the capacity of the health system.

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disavantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline.

Using a cluster randomised controlled trial, we evaluated a psychosocial stimulation intervention, comprising weekly home visits for 18 months, in urban slums of Cuttack, Odisha, India.

Global access to preschool has increased dramatically yet preschool quality is often poor.

Global access to preschool has increased dramatically yet preschool quality is often poor. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate two approaches to improving the quality of Colombian preschools.

This study is among the first to rigorously demonstrate potential of life skills interventions to change key outcomes of adolescent girls living in contexts where girls and women continue to be caught in a vicious cycle of low levels of human capital, low labour force participation rate, low wages, low bargaining power within the household, early marriage and high fertility.

Do tax systems distort firm-to-firm trade? Using data from both firms that do and don’t pay VAT in West Bengal in India, this paper shows that they can have significant effects, contributing to highly segmented supply chain networks.

This paper estimates flexible child health production functions to investigate whether better water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices make nutrition intake more productive for children aged 6-24 months.

In November 2018, Nigeria declared that its water supply, sanitation and hygiene sector was in crisis. This was partly prompted by the fact that the country has struggled to make progress towards ending open defecation. Almost one in four Nigerians – around 50 million people – defecates in open areas.

The low take-up of cost-effective and highly subsidised preventive health technologies in low-income countries remains a puzzle. In this paper we analyse whether, and how, micro-finance supports a large public health subsidy program in the developing world - the Swachh Bharat Mission - in achieving its aim of increasing uptake of individual household latrines.