Browsing by Author "Pritchett, Lant"

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    • Autonomous Reform versus Global Isomorphism: Explaining Iran’s Success in Reducing Fertility 

      Khandan, Masoomeh; Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2017-11)
      A long-standing literature in the sociology of organizations (e.g., DiMaggio and Powell 1983) suggests that, as change agents face uncertainty about actions and outcomes, they often seek legitimacy through isomorphism: ...

    • The Big Stuck in State Capability for Policy Implementation 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016-01)
      We divide the 102 historically developing countries (HDCs) into those with ‘very weak’, ‘weak’, ‘middle’, and ‘strong’ state capability. Analyzing the levels and recent growth rates of the HDCs’ capability for policy ...

    • Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers 

      Clemens, Michael; Montenegro, Claudio; Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016-03)
      Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds ...

    • The Challenge of Building (Real) State Capability 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2015-12)
      Efforts to build state capability often take the form of commonly used, highly designed and engineered best practice solutions that have worked in many other places and that we suspect (and hope) will work again in many ...

    • Deals Versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It 

      Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Khun-Jush, Gita; Pritchett, Lant (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions ...

    • Deals Versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It 

      Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Khun-Jush, Gita; Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2010-10)
      Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions ...

    • Doing Iterative and Adaptive Work 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016-01)
      Many of the challenges in international development are complex in nature. They involve many actors in uncertain contexts and with unclear solutions. Our work has proposed an approach to addressing such challenges, called ...

    • Doing Problem Driven Work 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2015-12)
      We often observe that more successful efforts to establish complex state capabilities are problem driven; focused relentlessly on solving a specific, attention-grabbing problem. This is the first principle of Problem Driven ...

    • Escaping Capability Traps through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2012-06)
      Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what ...

    • Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) 

      Andrews, Matthew R.; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael J. (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
      Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what ...

    • Essays in Optimizing Social Policy for Different Populations: Education, Targeting, and Impact Evaluation 

      Nadel, Sara B. (2016-05-18)
      In the first chapter of this dissertation, I look at the relationship between preference sets among students in similar majors, compared with different majors, in Peru. I find that students within majors share preference ...

    • How Business is Done and the 'Doing Business' Indicators: The Investment Climate when Firms have Climate Control 

      Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2010-11)
      "Doing Business" (DB) provides measures of the time and costs associated with fully complying with an array of business regulations. Enterprise Surveys (ES) ask a wide range of firms about their actual experiences in doing ...

    • Is India a Flailing State?: Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernization 

      Pritchett, Lant (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009)
      India is an emerging global superpower as its rapid growth has transformed its economy and has maintained itself as the world’s largest democracy. But at the same time India lags in many dimensions—its malnutrition rate ...

    • It’s All About MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning (‘e’) to Crawl the Design Space 

      Pritchett, Lant; Samji, Salimah; Hammer, Jeffrey (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2012-12)
      There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations—which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates—and executive organizations—which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. ...

    • Let’s Take the Con Out of Randomized Control Trials in Development: The Puzzles and Paradoxes of External Validity, Empirically Illustrated 

      Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2021)
      The enthusiasm for the potential of RCTs in development rests in part on the assumption that the use of the rigorous evidence that emerges from an RCT (or from a small set of studies identified as rigorous in a “systematic” ...

    • Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation 

      Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael; Andrews, Matthew (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2012-06)
      In many nations today the state has little capability to carry out even basic functions like security, policing, regulation or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term ...

    • Managing Your Authorizing Environment in a PDIA Process 

      Andrews, Matthew; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016-01)
      Development and state building processes are about change. Change is, however, elusive in many contexts. In prior work, we have offered problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) as an approach to tackle wicked hard change ...

    • National Development Delivers: And How! And How? 

      Pritchett, Lant (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2021-05)
      Core dual ideas of early development economics and practice were that (a) national development was a four-fold transformation of countries towards: (i) a more productive economy, (ii) a more responsive state, (iii) more ...

    • The Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries 

      Pritchett, Lant; Beatty, Amanda (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
      Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend ...

    • Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries 

      Pritchett, Lant; Beatty, Amanda (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2012-08)
      Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend ...