Working Papers

Contribution of Early-Age Circumstances to Inequalities in Educational-Achievement: A Within and Across Age Cohorts Comparative Study for Ethiopia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The academic evaluation system that focuses on rewarding students with high achievements and penalizing the low achievers by only looking at their test scores is misleading and unjust. First, inequality due to predetermined child circumstances should be leveled across children. Inequality that remains is likely to be attributed to children’s own effort differentials. Using Young Lives…

Is Sudan’s Public Debt sustainable? Preliminary Assessment ------------------------------------------- The motivation of this study is the recently launched global agenda of SDGs goals (17.4) that proposes to “Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability; this is to be attained through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress”. The current state of debt in Sudan…

Inequality of Opportunity in Child Health in Ethiopia ---------------------------------------- Early childhood development such as child health and nutrition is shown to affect success and well-being later in adulthood. While child health and nutrition are influenced by among others, parental inputs and access to public services, the latter are not equitably distributed across children, leading to inequality of opportunity (IOp). Using standardized height-for-age and weight-for-height as health outcome measures, the study decomposes the total inequality in…

Fiscal Federalism and Decentralization in Selected IGAD Member Countries ---------------------------------------- Fiscal  federalism  -  the  fiscal  implications  of  a  decentralized  system  of  multi-level government – is an important component of governance in a federal  or a decentralized system. Among the aspects of fiscal federalism to be assessed are the constitutional and political context, the allocation and the scope of federal, state and local revenues and expenditures, the nature and scope of intergovernmental transfers, equalization arrangements and…

Quantifying the road influence zone on socio- economic development in rural Tigray, Ethiopia ---------------------------------------- Rural roads are very important for economic development, especially in rural areas. Empirical studies confirmed that rural roads provide safe and efficient human mobility, enhance access to markets for inputs such as fertilizers and improved seeds, enable framers to sell their produce to nearby markets through a reduction in transport fare and time, and allow farmers to achieve additional non-farm employment…