The paper discusses the economic effects of misallocation of public expenditures in favor of private goods rather than public goods. It first lays out certain key hypotheses regarding the consequences of the apparent public sector...

The paper summarizes the key routes through which internal and international migration impact rural development and some of the evidence pertaining to these effects in low income countries. It concludes that, although the study of...

This paper explores a territorial approach to rural development in Latin America. It first reviews evidence that progress in rural social development has not been accompanied by reductions in income poverty and inequality. It then...

This paper discusses the experience of six conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America, a model of social safety nets which have grown to dominate the social protection sector in the region over the last...

As shown empirically for many transition economies, even small changes in assumptions on economies of size and adult equivalence scales are likely to produce significant changes in the analysis of poverty and its distribution across...

Egypt is on track to achieve its long-term goal of reducing the poverty rate to 6 percent by 2022. Continued progress towards this goal will require rapid employment growth for which agriculture growth, through its...

This paper examines the PROGRESA and PROCAMPO cash transfer programs in Mexico and evaluates their impact on household food security and nutrition. These two programs differ in their gender targeting, with PROGRESA aimed at women...

In developing countries poverty is generally measured with expenditure data. Such data are difficult and costly to obtain and it is generally recommended to collect them every 3-5 years. In between surveys, however, there is...

This paper deals with consumption dynamics and its effects on poverty. An econometric model is proposed in which changes in consumption across time are seen as fluctuations around the level of consumption that each family...

Albania is a country on the move. This mobility plays a key role in household-level strategies to cope with the economic hardship of transition. With the relaxing of controls on emigration at the beginning of...