Approximately 770 million adults worldwide are classified as illiterate. Despite the potential for adult education programs to bridge this gap, such programs are often plagued by low enrollment, high dropout, and limited skills acquisition. Recent research in educational neuroscience and economics o...

This paper finds that shareholders of highly leveraged firms benefit relatively less compared to bondholders from the corporate quantitative easing (QE) announcements by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England in March 2020, as evidence of debt overhang. Firms more heavily impacted by the ...

To support the 2030 Agenda, MDBs and DFIs have been asked to mobilize more private capital alongside their own investments in private firms. Mobilization volumes to date remain small, but progress has been made in developing new models that can attract different types of private investors at greate...

This paper examines the link between ministerial continuity in borrower governments and the performance of World Bank education projects implemented between 2000 and 2017 in 114 countries. I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to trace the link between number of ministers durin...

This paper focuses on the content and implementation of reforms to raise teacher quality in Peru in the period 2007-2020 in the hope that other countries facing the same challenges can benefit from this experience. We conclude with reflections on how education policy and education politics have cont...

This paper examines the impact of international differences in capital regulation on multinational banks’ loan origination location decisions. We find that greater borrower transparency to a local bank establishment makes loan location at this establishment more likely, and that regulatory arbitrage...

Countries continue to bet on Special Economic Zones to improve their industrial prospects, but why? SEZs are a handy and politically expedient instrument of regional and industrial policies, but too often, countries continue to establish zones even though they've ceased to deliver the outcomes they...