This study aims to understand the factors that influence the equilibrium of poor housing quality in India, where low-income households (demand side) demand services from informally trained masons (supply side). This study proposes to understand the...

Researchers aim to explore the role of three potential, non-mutually exclusive, reasons for why the responsiveness of local officials to the needs of dwellers in rapidly growing urban areas at the outskirt of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is low: (1) they lack...

Researchers have partnered with two garment factories, a local bank, and a mobile payments provider to study whether employers can assist workers in building basic financial capability by offering electronic wage payments. To investigate this question...

Urban populations in the developing world are expanding rapidly, driven, in large part, by rural migrants drawn by the promise of lucrative employment alternatives to agriculture. However, significant barriers often prevent new migrants, who have left behind...

The delivery of public services in many developing countries is very poor. The literature has focused the lack of incentives for officials to perform adequately. However, a significant challenge to the delivery of public services might be the lack of capacity...

Traffic is a significant and growing concern in many developing and emerging countries, which are experiencing rising incomes and increasing urbanization. This project aims to shed light on one mechanism that has the potential to help reduce traffic and its...

The Bangladeshi garment industry was instrumental in expanding women’s employment opportunities in the urban job market. However, the positions available to women at factories remain mostly limited to those at the machine-operator level. Building on previous...

Revenue recovery is a challenge for urban service providers in developing countries. Poor customers often struggle to pay monthly bills and providers face both high costs and political economy barriers to enforcing payment. Prepayment is an increasingly...

A significant challenge to the provision of local public services–water, sanitation, waste removal, etc.–in developing economies is the inability to raise adequate resources, especially through local taxation. In many countries the social compact, whereby...

Diabetes and diabetes-related complications have reached epidemic levels in urban India. A promising strategy for local governments to reduce the financial and physical burdens of diabetes is to encourage better disease management by patients. Disease...

Researchers will conduct a pilot of a randomized evaluation in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Mozambique to determine whether reducing wait times can increase the demand for antenatal care and improve the quality of care. The central hypothesis...

Children of families that recently migrated to urban slums in Dhaka, Bangladesh suffer high morbidity and mortality from acute respiratory illnesses because of low immunization rates and delays in seeking appropriate health care. Recently relocated families...

This project addresses poor hand hygiene, a leading driver of child mortality via bacterial and viral contamination and resulting diarrhea and acute respiratory infection. Public health campaigns focused on handwashing with soap have consistently failed to...

Prepaid water and electricity meters offer a promising solution to lumpy and unpredictable bills by allowing customers to choose the timing and quantity of purchases. At the same time, prepayment circumvents debt accumulation, allowing utility companies to...

The density that defines cities exacerbates collective action problems: my garbage litters your street, my sewage taints your drinking water. Households and firms often do not see the true cost that their waste imposes on others, which leads to excessive...

Researchers are piloting an impact evaluation of depression treatment and economic assistance for women in peri-urban communities near Bangalore, India. Poor mental health is a severe problem in developing countries and particularly in peri-urban areas with...

A well-integrated citywide public transport network contributes to economic development by reducing transport costs and travel time, facilitating specialization of firms and workers, and decreasing the cost of economic transactions. Yet, despite increasing...

A significant challenge to the provision of local public services–water, sanitation, waste removal, etc.–in developing economies is the inability to raise adequate resources, especially through local taxation. In many countries this social compact–whereby...

Researchers will pilot a stress management intervention based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to understand whether building skills to cope with psychological strain raises productivity and well-being levels among female workers in an urban manufacturing...

The majority of individuals with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) live in the developing world, where prevalence rates are growing rapidly as nations become richer and more urban. In cities, where most individuals have access to a variety of medical providers...

This project proposes estimating the willingness-to-pay for a novel water treatment device that is attached to a hand pump that draws water from the public water supply network. The water supply is often contaminated with impurity and pathogens and causes...

The transport sector accounts for over 60 percent of global petroleum consumption and nearly a quarter of world carbon-dioxide emissions. It seems evident that if we are to address global climate challenges it will be necessary to ensure that the rapidly...

We propose to study the demand for household connection to municipal sewage systems in informal slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Governments are investing in expensive sewerage systems to bring sanitation services to the household door. The cost-effectiveness of these...

Public health externalities from unhygienic sanitation remain a significant development challenge, even in areas where hygienic latrines are accessible or affordable. We hypothesize that behaviors like open defecation may persist because they represent...

Each poor person cannot buy urban services alone. Many important urban services are utility or network goods, that are only viable to supply at scale, meaning that each customer’s access depends on the take-up and payments of others. This evaluation uses a...

This project received off-cycle pilot funding in early 2015, after which the researchers submitted a proposal for a full evaluation to carry out a research study to test different strategies to encourage the urban poor in a peri-urban area in Lusaka to build...

A household’s water usage has negative externalities on community members and future community members when water resources are scarce and depletable. If piped water is delivered by a water utility, this externality can be addressed by setting the price equal...