Conditional Cash TransfersThis paper evaluates the impact of a "labeled cash transfer" (LCT). The program we evaluate features small transfers, targeted to poor communities (with all households eligible in those communities), and paid out to fathers. The program is unconditional but retains an implicit endorsement of education through its school-based enrollment procedure. This program was designed and implemented on a (randomized) pilot basis by Morocco's Ministry of Education. Within the same experiment, conducted over 600 communities, we compared it to three variants: (i) making the transfer explicitly conditional on regular attendance, (ii) making payments to mothers instead of fathers, and (iii) doing both at the same time.
Conditional Cash TransfersThis paper evaluates the impact of a "labeled cash transfer" (LCT). The program we evaluate features small transfers, targeted to poor communities (with all households eligible in those communities), and paid out to fathers. The program is unconditional but retains an implicit endorsement of education through its school-based enrollment procedure. This program was designed and implemented on a (randomized) pilot basis by Morocco's Ministry of Education. Within the same experiment, conducted over 600 communities, we compared it to three variants: (i) making the transfer explicitly conditional on regular attendance, (ii) making payments to mothers instead of fathers, and (iii) doing both at the same time.
Efforts to bring informal firms into the formal sector are often based on a view that this will bring benefits to the firms themselves, or at least benefit governments through increasing the tax base. A randomized experiment based around the introduction of the entreprenant legal status in Benin is used to test these assumptions, along with supplementary efforts to enhance the presumed benefits of formalizing to firms. Few firms register when just given information about the new regime, but our full package of supplementary efforts boosts formalization by 16.3 percentage points. However, this formalization does not bring firms higher sales or profits, and the cost of formalizing these firms exceeds the added taxation they will pay over the next decade. We show how better targeting of these policies towards firms that look more like formal firms to begin with can increase the formalization rate and improve costeffectiveness.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
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