"The benefits of financial development and globalization have come with continuing fragility in financial sectors. Periodic crises have had real but heterogeneous welfare impacts and not just for poor people; indeed, some of the conditions that foster deep and persistent poverty, such as lack of...

"This paper assesses the impact of work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to account for unobserved factors that...

"Expanding and improving basic education in developing countries requires, at a minimum, teachers who are present in the classroom and motivated to teach, but this essential input is often missing. This paper describes the findings of a series of recent World Bank and other studies on teacher...

"Lack of access to electricity is one of the major impediments to growth and development of the rural economies in developing countries. That is why access to modern energy, in particular to electricity, has been one of the priority themes of the World Bank and other development organizations....

"Although there has been considerable recent interest in micro-credit programs, rigorous evidence on the impacts of forming self-help groups to mobilize savings and foster social empowerment at the local level is virtually non-existent, despite a large number of programs following this pattern....