This paper examines the macroeconomic impact of migration on income convergence in the EU's New Member States (NMS). The paper focuses on cross-border mobility of labor and examines the implications for policymakers with the help of a general equilibrium model. It finds that cross-border labor...

Many governments have initiated public employment programs or expanded the existing ones in response to high unemployment. However, in many middle-income countries, a relatively large government coexists with persistently high unemployment. This paper explores the question of whether public...

We quantify the extent to which public-sector employment crowds out private-sector employment using specially assembled datasets for a large cross-section of developing and advanced countries, and discuss the implications for countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus and Central Asia....

This paper examines the extent to which developing countries benefit from intersectoral factor transfers by specifying the impact and determinants of sectoral changes and of the degree of dualism (or allocation inefficiency) in a dual economy model. Conditions under which factor reallocation is...

This paper reviews the literature on the informal economy, focusing first on empirical findings and then on existing approaches to modeling informality within both partial and general equilibrium environments. We concentrate on labour and credit markets, since these tend to be most affected by...

This paper presents the status report on Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Having prepared the Interim-PRSP (I-PRSP) in March 2003, the government of Bangladesh has set itself to a well-rounded process of preparing the full-blown PRSP by December 2004. That would...

This paper reviews the Third Progress Report 2002/03 for Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The report highlights what the government did during the past year in terms of policy developments, an assessment of the achievements and challenges, including the monitoring system. There are...

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) on Burkina Faso explains economic growth and persistence. The government intends to strengthen the foundations of macroeconomic and financial stability, and enhance competitiveness in promising sectors. Success in meeting the expected objectives of...

Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influence schooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991 tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schooling and decline in...

This paper studies the effects of household income on labor participation and school enrollment of children aged 10 to 14 in Brazil using a social security reform as a source of exogenous variation in household income. Estimates imply that the gap between actual and full school enrollment was...