COVID-19 was a major shock to youth entrepreneurs and their businesses in Kenya. This paper studies the causal impact of grants—worth two months of baseline business revenue—and business development services...
Long-acting reversible contraceptives are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of interventions addressing two...
This policy note provides evidence from World Bank field experiments that consider the social, psychological, and economic factors influencing taxpayer decision-making. Complementary studies from Costa...
Working with the Mexican Ministry of Education, this study piloted a scalable program to reduce high school dropout rates by focusing on socio-emotional skill development and mathematics tutoring. The...
Mental health, well-being, and lasting economic outcomes are intimately connected. However, in geographies marked by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV), entrepreneurs of small and medium size enterprises...
This paper examines the links between adverse events, depression, and decision making in Nigeria. It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and deaths can affect short-term perceptions of welfare...
This paper examines the links between adverse events, depression, and decision making in Nigeria. It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and deaths can affect short-term perceptions of welfare...
This literature review summarizes the link between psychological well-being and entrepreneurial outcomes for small and medium-size enterprises in fragile, conflict, and violence–affected contexts. It identifies...
Bureaucratic performance is a crucial determinant of economic growth. Little is known about how to improve it in resource-constrained settings. This study describes a field trial of a social recognition...
Mobilizing domestic revenues efficiently is a priority for the Government of Poland, but it is not easy. There are numerous instruments that can be used to achieve this objective. Traditional measures...
Although the concept of randomized assignment to control for extraneous factors reaches back hundreds of years, the first empirical use appears to have been in an 1835 trial of homeopathic medicine. Throughout...
Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate how private and public information affect the selection of an innovation and the timing of adoption. The results shed light on the behavioral anomaly...
International development policy is ripe for an overhaul.Behavioral science can help policy makers to spur changes in behaviors that are difficult to explain from a conventional economic perspective and...
The paper shows that self-control, time preferences, and values are malleable in adults, and that investments in these skills and preferences reduce crime and violence. The authors recruited criminally-engaged...
This study investigates an attempt to economically and socially empower some of the poorest and most vulnerable young women in one of the poorest and most fragile places in the world: northern Uganda...
The authors evaluated the use of conditional cash transfers as an HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention strategy to incentivize safe sex. An unblinded, individually randomised and controlled...
This paper reports on the analysis of data from Nepal. The farm households surveyed were chosen so that about half were in a region exposed to the newly-introduced training-and-visit (T & V) extension...
Available data suggest that there remain a substantial number of moderately malnourished children in China, particularly in rural areas. Studies in other countries have found that, among other adverse...