This paper contributes to the analysis of spatial poverty in Ecuador by deepening the understanding of the constraints faced by the poor in the country through an investigation of the role of portable characteristics (human capital) and geography in explaining welfare. At the national level, the...

The National School for Professional Technology Education (CONALEP) is Mexico's largest and oldest technical education system. CONALEP serves low-income students at the upper-secondary school level in Mexico. The labor market performance of CONALEP graduates has been evaluated four times in the...

Apparel is the largest labor-intensive manufacturing industry in South Asia, and is a major employer of women. Although South Asia's apparel sector benefits from many of the same favorable conditions as East Asia's, performance in South Asian apparel remains well below that of East Asia. The...

South Asia has a huge need to create more and better jobs for a growing population especially in the manufacturing industries where it is underperforming as compared to East Asia. The report examines three critical and relatively understudied drivers of competitiveness: -Economies of...

The U-shape theory argues that at early stages of development, countries experience a reduction in the female labor force participation, eventually followed by a recovery. In Morocco, female labor force participation is now lower than it was two decades ago due to several factors that are...

This paper examines the extent to which social networks among indigenous peoples have a significant effect on a variety of human capital investment and economic activities, such as school attendance and work among teenage boys and girls, and migration, welfare participation, employment status,...

The 2008 “food price crisis” and more recent spikes in food prices have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion their impact on poverty and malnutrition. Estimating the income elasticity of micro-nutrients and assessing how they change during such crises is an important...

This paper examines the impacts of weather shocks, defined as rainfall or growing degree days more than a standard deviation from their respective long-run means, on household consumption per capita and child height-for-age. The results reveal that the current risk-coping mechanisms are not...

This paper takes advantage of the exogenous phasing of direct elections in districts and applies the double difference estimator to: (i) measure impacts on the pattern of public spending and revenue generation at the district level; and (ii) investigate the heterogeneity of the impacts on public...

The authors use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks: (i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset period. Focusing on...