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This book deals with Private Information Retrieval (PIR), a technique allowing a user to retrieve an element from a server in possession of a database without revealing to the server which element is retrieved. PIR has been widely applied to protect the privacy of the user in querying a service provider on the Internet. For example, by PIR, one can query a location-based service provider about the nearest car park without revealing his location to the server. The first PIR approach was introduced by Chor, Goldreich, Kushilevitz and Sudan in 1995 in a multi-server setting, where the user retrieves information from multiple database servers, each of which has a copy of the same database. To ensure user privacy in the multi-server setting, the servers must be trusted not to collude. In 1997, Kushilevitz and Ostrovsky constructed the first single-database PIR. Since then, many efficient PIR solutions have been discovered. Beginning with a thorough survey of single-database PIR techniques, this text focuses on the latest technologies and applications in the field of PIR. The main categories are illustrated with recently proposed PIR-based solutions by the authors. Because of the latest treatment of the topic, this text will be highly beneficial to researchers and industry professionals in information security and privacy.

Data protection. --- Data and Information Security.

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This essay discusses practical issues confronted when conducting surveys as well as designing appropriate field trials. First, it looks at the challenge of ensuring transparency while maintaining confidentiality. Second, it explores the role of trust in light of asymmetric information held by the surveyor and by the respondents as well as the latter's expectations as to what their participation will set in motion. The authors present case studies relevant to both of these issues. Finally, they discuss the role of ethical review from the perspective of research conducted through the World Bank.

Ethics, survey data collection --- Health Monitoring & Evaluation --- Information Security & Privacy --- Institutional Review Boards --- Population Policies --- Poverty Reduction --- Scientific Research & Science Parks --- Tertiary Education

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This paper examines the specialization and diversity of manufacturing industries within Indian districts. Prior to India's recent economic growth and liberalization, specialization levels in 1989 were substantially higher than similar metrics calculated for the United States. From 1989 to 2010, average specialization levels for Indian districts declined to a level that is now quite comparable to the United States. Diversity levels similarly increased. Specialization and diversity levels in India are becoming more persistent with time. Manufacturing plants display higher productivity in districts that display both properties. From 1989 to 2010, manufacturing employment growth was higher in districts that were more specialized at the start of the period.

Development --- Diversity --- E-Business --- Growth --- Information Security & Privacy --- Labor Policies --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Manufacturing --- Political Economy --- Poverty Reduction --- Specialization --- Urban --- Water and Industry

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This paper studies the relationship between inequality of opportunity and development outcomes in a cross-country setting. Scholars have long debated the impact of inequality on growth, development, and the quality of institutions in a society. The empirical relationships are however confounded by the notion that "inequality" can be seen as a composite of inequality arising from differences in effort and ability, which would tend to encourage competition and productivity, and inequality attributable to unequal opportunities, particularly in terms of access to basic goods and services, which might translate to wasted human potential and lower levels of development. The analysis in this paper applies a measure of educational opportunities that incorporates inequality between "types" or circumstance groups. Theories from economic history are used to instrument for this type of inequality in a large cross-country dataset. The results seem to confirm the hypothesis that this measure of inequality of opportunity is a better fit for structural inequality than the Gini index of income. The results suggest that inequality of endowments at the outset of history led to unequal educational opportunities, which in turn affected development outcomes such as institutional quality, infant mortality, and economic growth. The findings are robust to several checks on the instrumental variable specification.

Economic Theory & Research --- Education --- Equity --- Growth --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- Information and Communication Technologies --- Information Security and Privacy --- Institutions --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Opportunity --- Population Policies --- Poverty Impact Evaluation --- Poverty Reduction

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Transparency-sunshine-is often touted as a core element of the governance agenda, and one that is most important in environments with low transparency to begin with. In a provocative paper published in the American Political Science Review, Edmund Malesky, Paul Schuler, and Anh Tran present the results of a creative experiment in which they provided an additional spotlight on the activities of a random sample of delegates to Vietnam's National Assembly. They report that the effect of sunshine was negative, that delegates subject to this treatment curtailed their speech, and that those who spoke most critically were punished through the subsequent election and promotion processes. The present paper argues that Malesky, Schuler, and Tran's results, if interpreted correctly, actually predict a net positive effect of transparency. The differences in interpretation stem primarily from three sources: the interpretation of regression results for models with interaction terms, the interpretation of the variable for Internet penetration, and significant pre-treatment differences between treated and control delegates. For the context in which more than 80 percent of delegates operate, Malesky, Schuler, and Tran's results predict a positive but insignificant effect of transparency. In addition, Internet penetration, itself a measure of access to information, is positively associated with critical speech. The paper draws lessons for the design and interpretation of randomized experiments with interaction effects.

Disease Control & Prevention --- Economic Theory & Research --- Educational Technology and Distance Education --- Information Security & Privacy --- Internet --- Legislature --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Multiplicative interaction --- Political economy --- Poverty Reduction --- Randomized experiments --- Technology Industry --- Transparency --- Vietnam