In developing countries, microfinance has been the darling of the development community, and in developed countries, microfinance fits well with Third Ways ideas. What are the challenges and opportunities for the attempt to replicate microfinance in the United States? This paper attempts to...

Microenterprise programs attempt to help poor people start or strengthen small businesses. Funding and political support has grown rapidly. Is microenterprise a good use of scarce development funds? Unfortunately, most evaluations have been case studies in what not to do. Because benefits and...

The recent reform of the federal welfare system is meant to encourage recipients to leave welfare and enter the workforce. If the reform is successful there are likely to be effects felt throughout the low-- skilled end of the labor market. As former welfare recipients enter the labor market,...

This paper investigates the impact of financial incentive programs, which have become an increasingly common component of welfare programs. We review experimental evidence from several such programs. Financial incentive programs appear to increase work and raise income (lower poverty), but cost...

This paper describes an attempt to measure resources used to produce Individual Development Accounts in a program run by the Community Action Project of Tulsa County. The experimental design of the program-- participants were selected from applicants at random--aims to inform the overall...

Development depends on saving. But what exactly is saving, and how is it measured? This paper defines saving and describes several measures of financial savings. The measures account for the passage of time and for the three stages of saving: putting in (depositing), keeping in (maintaining a...

The institutional reforms towards trade liberalizations in Latin America during the 1980s and the 1990s have introduced a good measure of import competition, but trade policies alone are not sufficient to create a competitive environment in an economy. The countries in Latin America have not had...

A survey of trade elasticities published for Latin American economies is conducted. Articles surveyed were published between 1975 and 1997. They include data from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s. Imports are found to be highly income elastic as well as very price inelastic. Relatively fewer...

This paper examines individual trade policy preferences across the 17 countries in Latin America. The focus is on whether skilled or unskilled workers are more likely to support liberalized trade and on whether country characteristics, such as factor endowments, alter the preferences of skilled...

This paper explores the role of global risk aversion (GRA) and its main determinants, US economic growth and the US government bond yield, in explaining developments in Latin American sovereign spreads. We find that GRA is significant and positively related to Latin American sovereign spreads...