"Minimum wages are generally thought to be unenforceable in developing rural economies. But there is one solution - a workfare scheme in which the government acts as the employer of last resort. Is this a cost-effective policy against poverty? Using a microeconometric model of the casual labor...

"The authors examine the empirical evidence in support of the poverty trap view of underdevelopment. They calibrate simple aggregate growth models in which poverty traps can arise due to either low saving or low technology at low levels of development. They then use these models to assess the...

"The idea that developing countries face a trade-off between poverty and inequality has had considerable influence on thinking about development policy. The experience of developing countries in the 1990s does not, however, reveal any sign of a systematic trade-off between measures of absolute...

"The authors examine the distributional implications of selective compliance in sample surveys, whereby households with different incomes are not equally likely to participate. They discuss poverty and inequality measurement implications for monotonically decreasing and inverted-U...

"An extensive literature on the relationship between decentralization (or localization) and corruption has developed in recent years. While some authors argue that there is a positive relationship between decentralization and corruption, others claim that decentralization in fact leads to a...

"Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? Bravo-Ortega and De Gregorio present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth...

"How rich would resource-abundant countries be if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the past 30 years? Hamilton, Ruta, and Tajibaeva use time series data on investments and rents on exhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer...

"Regulation is purportedly enacted to serve specific social purposes. In reality, however, it follows a more complex political economy process, where legitimate social goals are mixed with the objectives of particular interest groups. Whatever its justification and objectives, regulation can...

"Economic geography has become a mantra for many economists, geographers, and regional scientists. Previous studies have tested the importance of economic geography for production activities and found a significant association between them. Most of these studies, however, have not taken into...

"To study the effects of tariffs on gross domestic product (GDP), one needs import demand elasticities at the tariff line level that are consistent with GDP maximization. These do not exist. Kee, Nicita, and Olarreaga modify Kohli's (1991) GDP function approach to estimate demand elasticities...