Together with a lockdown and an information campaign, India’s early response to the Covid-19 pandemic included the launch of PMGKY, a major social protection package. This built on previous digital investments including in direct benefit transfer to financial accounts as well as on several establish...

COVID-19 vaccination efforts are well and truly underway across the world. In addition to those in Europe and North America, vaccination campaigns are gathering pace across China, India, Russia, and the Middle East, though lagging in many other, mostly poor, countries. As more start scaling up their...

This paper surveys the arguments for and against cash-transfer programs in resource-rich states, discusses some of the new biometric identification technologies, and reaches preliminary conclusions about their potentially very large benefits for developing countries.