To minimize the harmful impact on poor people of macroeconomic shocks, sound policies for dealing with crises - and an adequate public safety net - should be in place before a crisis starts. Many developing countries faced macroeconomic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s. The impact of the shocks on...

Concern about how cuts in public spending affect the poor has led to recommendations that cuts be combined with better targeting to the poor. That should not be difficult if there is broad political support for protecting the poor from cuts. But is it possible to target more, while spending...

Compliance with minimum wage laws and non-wage conditions of employment often depends on labor market specific factors. In developing countries, many workers still earn less than the legal minimum and lack access to mandated non-wage benefits. Enforcement has not kept up with regulation growth...

The issue of employer power is underemphasized in the development literature. The default model is usually one of competitive labor markets. This assumption matters for analysis and policy prescription. There is growing evidence that the competitive labor markets assump- tion is not valid for...

The issue of employer power is underemphasized in the development literature. The default model is usually one of competitive labour markets. This assumption matters for analysis and policy prescription. There is growing evidence that the competitive labour markets assumption is not valid for...

"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The "Western middle class" is defined as those who are not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people...

"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that very poor people incur a negligible cost of social...