"We use a recently constructed cross-country data set on absolute poverty to examine whether there is regional and sectoral variation in the relationship between poverty and economic growth. We find that the povertygrowth linkage is strongest in East Asia and that this linkage is essentially...

"We use a recently constructed cross-country data set on absolute poverty to examine whether there is regional and sectoral variation in the relationship between poverty and economic growth. We find that the povertygrowth linkage is strongest in East Asia and that this linkage is essentially...

This paper provides a critical review of the burgeoning literature on social capital, highlighting a number of serious conceptual and empirical problems associated with this literature. First, the concept of social capital remains largely elusive, with many different ideas attached to it. This...

Recent years have seen the emergence of a considerable volume of literature on governance and its role in economic and social development of a country. This paper provides a critical review of the literature. This review brings into the open a number of serious conceptual, measurement, and data...

This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of family microenterprises operate. It highlights a number of issues that impinge...

This paper provides an extensive review of growth, inequality and poverty reduction in the East Asian miracle economies. This review suggests that the basic impetus for poverty reduction was robust economic growth, which was fostered by a conducive policy and institutional framework. This...

"Access to new information and communication technologies (ICT) remains extremely unequally distributed across and within societies. While there have been a good deal of popular discussions about this "digital divide", not much is known about the quantitative significance of its various...

This paper takes a fresh look, from a macro perspective, at the issue of aid effectiveness. An important point of departure for this study is that it adopts poverty reduction, as contrasted from economic growth, as the metric for measuring aid effectiveness. In conducting the empirical...

Many commentators have extolled the virtues of new information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) in reducing poverty and improving the quality of life. While such arguments havebeen used before in relation to many predecessor technologies, including other earliercommunications technologies,...