We use new, detailed oil data and an event-study design to analyze political change in 36 oil-producing countries that experienced at least 10 years of declining production. We find that when their production starts to decline, they become significantly more democratic, relative to both the overall ...

The push for the World Bank and others to link their investments to addressing climate concerns stems from a fear that, unless developing countries take action to decarbonize now, their economic growth will lead to vast emissions that will derail all global efforts to limit climate change.

To hear talk of it, you might think educating girls is a silver bullet to solve all the world’s ills. A large and still growing collection of research demonstrates the wide-ranging benefits of girls’ education. Recent research has nuanced some of those findings, but the fundamental result stands: Ed...

This report debates the case for specific public investments in education in low- and lower-middle-income countries, drawing on evidence of what has worked not just in small-scale experiments but historically and in large-scale national programs. Its messages are intended more for economic policymak...

Education is one of the most important public goods provided by modern governments. Yet governments worldwide seldom perform well in the sector. This raises the question: Why do governments preside over poor education quality? This paper answers this question with evidence from Tanzania.

Following the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 in 2020, schools around the world closed for significant periods of time. Many scholars provided projections of the likely impacts on educational outcomes, with potentially dire impacts on learning loss and—especially in low-income contexts–dropout rates...

We use comparable, survey-based literacy tests for repeated cross-sections of men and women born between 1950 and 2000 to study education outcomes across cohorts in 87 countries. We find that education quality, defined as literacy conditional on completing five years of schooling, stagnated or decli...