« L’ODA bashing » est devenue une activité en vogue. Au-delà des procès périodiques sur la faible efficacité de l’aide, voire ses effets pervers, toute une littérature s’est développée ces dernières années pour annoncer la « fin de l’aide », en prétextant parfois que son...

ODA bashing has become a popular pastime. Apart from the periodic allegations that aid has little effect or that its effects are perverse, a wealth of material has been produced in recent years announcing the end of aid and sometimes claiming that its role in the development of poor countries...

We use an experimental field approach to understand better the pro-social preferences andbehavior of both individuals involved in the provision of social services (public servants) and the behavior of those potential beneficiaries, the poor. We conducted field experiments using the Dictator,...

The main contribution of this paper with respect to previous work is the use of data on subjective perceptions to identify the Latin American middle classes. This paper provides a set of comparisons between objective and subjective definitions of middle-class using data from the 2007 World...

Most Latin American countries have ABC (acronyms from the Spanish words of voucher, mortgage and savings) designed social housing program. Little is known of the impacts of these programs. In this paper we estimate the welfare affects of twelve of these programs. We estimate whether the programs...

There are few reliable estimates of the effects of violence on economic outcomes. This study exploits the manifold increase in homicides in 2008-2011 in Mexico resulting from its war on organized drug traffickers to estimate the effect of drug- related homicides on housing prices. Using an...

Any system of transfer payments must be administered by officials with some degree of discretionary power over the manner in which funds are allocated. Attitudes of such officials regarding the worthiness of various recipients therefore have implications for resource allocation. Using a sample...

Electricity markets have typically been regulated all over the world. In Europe, UK and Norway have begun to deregulate their electricity markets. Several more countries will probably join them in the near future, for example Finland, Sweden and Spain. The objectives are twofold: to increase...

The welfare effects of introducing taxes on emissions of carbon dioxide is analysed within an empirical general equilibrium model of the Norwegian economy. A CO2 tax regime where we aim at stabilising the CO2 emissions at the 1990 emission level in 2020 is compared to a reference scenario...

This paper explores some of the dimensions related to poverty and exclusion, by defining a Relational Capability Index (RCI) which focuses on the quality of relationships among people and on their level of relational empowerment. This index is rooted in a relational anthropology; it insists on...