For several decades, the international community has aspired to integrate the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Yet, no country has achieved the patterns of consumption and production that could sustain global prosperity in the coming decades. Thus, with the...

Since 1950s, most African nations have gained independence from their colonial powers. Fortunately, independence has brought many changes to these nations and these include multi-party democratic government and western education systems. Unfortunately, the Africa’s economy is the least...

Notably, the 20th century was dominated by the legacy of devastating global wars, colonial struggles, and ideological conflicts as well as effort s to establish international systems that would foster global peace and prosperity. Yet, insecurity and corruption not only remain, they have become...

In both developed and developing countries, there are basically two main sources of economic instability: exogenous shocks and inappropriate policies. Exogenous shock (terms-of-trade shocks, natural disasters and capital flow reversals) can throw an economy into disequilibrium and therefore...

We construct a model that considers the direct effects, if any, of government spending on the attitudes of a typical consumer toward risk, time preference, and intertemporal substitution. The null hypothesis is that a growing government sector does not affect the consumer's behavior, and the...

The objective of this study is to investigate whether remittances in Macedonia affect poverty and inequality. Using two household surveys, one conducted in 2008, one in 2012, we find that remittances reduce both poverty and inequality. The inequality-reducing effect has been particularly present...

There are few studies of the social and economic consequences of remittances from migrant workers on poverty and inequality in their home country until recently, especially in Haiti. The known amount of remittances sent to Haiti by the Haitian diaspora has surpassed one billion U.S. dollars in...

This note explores the mathematical theory to solve modern gambler’s ruin problems. We establish a ruin framework and solve for the probability of bankruptcy. We also show how this relates to the expected time to bankruptcy and review the risk neutral probabilities associated an adjustment to...

Indonesia experienced a rapid reduction in poverty during the strong economic growth pre-crisis period. By estimating the impact of sectoral economic growth components on consistently measured poverty rates across regions and over time, this study finds that agricultural growth is the largest...

This study examines the poverty of the ethnic minorities in the poorest areas in Vietnam. We find that the ethnic minority now constitute more than a half of the poor population, though they account for around 14.5 percent of the population,. The share of the poor ethnic minorities in the total...