Governance Lab in partnership with researchers at Yale University, London School of Economics and EPoD India at LEAD at KREA University uses rigorous evidence to address challenging questions at the intersection of economic development and public policy. Our cutting-edge research examines questions related to governance, financial inclusion, skills, gender, and sustainable development, and draws from a network of academics with the expertise of working in Nepal and around the world. We work with policy and program partners, engaging with stakeholders in all three spheres of government and Nepali academia to move this research agenda forward.

Federalism in Nepal fundamentally seeks to empower new political and economic actors in order to ensure inclusive growth. Our research project will explore the functioning of federalism to identify the extent to which federalism is achieving the three big changes of successful transition to political inclusion, economic transformation, and leaving no-one behind. Specific research activities will involve a large-scale federalism tracking survey to identify both overall progress on federalism and variation in progress across municipalities, the analysis of administrative and secondary datasets to examine how federalism is influencing public and private good provision, and collaborations with Nepalese counterparts to design evaluations of specific programs to build more practical evidence on what works, what does not and why, in this new context.