Can governments contract out school management at scale? In 2016 the Government of Punjab transferred management of over 4,000 failing primary schools to private operators. Schools remained free to students. Private operators received a government subsidy per enrolled student of less than half per-s...

Does channeling government-to-person (G2P) payments through bank accounts encourage financial inclusion and use? This paper explores the factors that have driven the adoption of digital payments in India by beneficiaries of PMGKY, the large-scale COVID-19 relief program launched in May 2020.

In developing Asia there is potential for higher corrective taxes to help prevent many non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and contribute revenue. The productivity loss from death and disability from alcohol, tobacco and diets high in sugar-sweetened beverages in purchasing power parity dollars is PPP$...

This paper discusses how fiscal policy can help foster more inclusive growth in developing Asia. On average, government expenditures in developing Asia are higher, as a share of gross domestic product, than those in Latin America and the Caribbean. Relative to Latin America, developing Asia spends m...

This paper discusses the evolution of key taxes in the past 20 years in developing Asia and fiscal challenges that these countries face in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents estimates of tax capacity and tax potential and discusses the productivity of key taxes in the region. The paper find...

This paper analyzes a rich pre-pandemic data set on both men and women business owners from 401 mainly rural villages in five regencies (kabupaten) of East Java province, Indonesia. There are some similarities but mostly large gender differences in characteristics and resources in this random sample...

Using administrative universal firm registration data as well as primary offline and online surveys of small business owners in China, we examine (i) whether the digitization of business operations helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) better cope with the pandemic shock, and (ii) if the pandemi...