When policymakers and practitioners decide that "empowerment" - usually of women or the poor - is a development goal what do they mean? And how do they determine the extent to which it has been achieved? Despite empowerment having become a widely used term in this context there is no accepted...

Since the 1990s, accelerating economic growth has regained its dominance in the anti poverty strategies. However, the rising tendency of income inequity at the global level and within the countries emphasizes the need to incorporate distributional factors to make the pro-poor growth strategies...

The paper presents an overview of the situation of women in informal employment in Latin America and their access to social protection, and examines key public policy issues in extending social protection to this group. Informal employment has risen in Latin America in the last two decades. This...

This paper examines the water and sewerage service delivery programs for the poor residents in the MWSS service area. Specifically, it analyzes the pro-poor water programs of the MWCI and MAYNILAD, the private water concessionaires of MWSS, by looking into the mechanisms adopted to expand access...

The oil and gas industry is divided into two sectors: the upstream sector in which exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas take place, and the downstream sector in which the crude oil and natural gas are processed in refineries and petrochemical plants. Oil and gas development...

This paper examines the regulatory environment of the two most important and contentious energy sectors in the Philippines, namely, the power sector and the downstream oil industry sector. These sectors also experienced recent deregulation initiatives that promise to radically reshape their...