This study looks at the effect of welfare programs on work incentives and the adult labor supply in developing countries. The analysis builds on the experimental evaluations of three programs implemented in rural areas: Mexico's PROGRESA, Nicaragua's RPS and Honduras' PRAF. Comparable results...

We examine the case for donors providing financial incentives to NGOs to increase community participation. We show that, when such incentives are provided, there need not exist any meaningful relationship between beneficiary welfare and the extent of community participation implemented by an...

Fair Trade has spread in developing countries as an initiative aimed at lifting poor smallholder farmers out of poverty by providing them with premium prices, availability of credit, and improved community development and social goods. Fair Trade is also viewed as a niche market for high value...

This paper argues that actual technological spillovers are not substantial in developing countries because of the absence of an absorptive capacity. We carry out a panel data analysis in an attempt to gain insight into the specific aspects that enable economies to benefit from the backlog of...

This paper theoretically analyses the dynamics of knowledge accumulation with the aim of understanding how developing economies can effectively engage in the process of knowledge accumulation. The main focus is on the complementarity between competence building and innovation. Our analysis is...

What really makes an economy competitive? This paper reviews and discusses how the capacity to generate, exploit and diffuse new knowledge is key in enabling countries to capitalise on challenges brought about by rapid technology-driven transformations rather than succumb to their adverse...

This paper revisits an earlier contribution (Narula and Dunning 2000) and considers how economic globalisation has changed the nature of the MNE, MNE motivations, the MNE subsidiary and the modalities by which they interact with domestic economic actors. Most developing countries, however, have...

This paper examines how stringent de facto firing regulations affect firm size throughout the developing world. We exploit a large firm level dataset across 63 countries and within country variation in the enforcement of the labor codes in countries with very different de jure firing...

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed...

We develop a model of regulation of service-delivery NGOs, where future grants are conditional on prior spending of some minimal proportion of current revenue on direct project-related expenses. Such regulation induces some NGOs to increase current project spending, but imposes wasteful costs of...