"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 analyze general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components and emphasizing Gini and Atkinson indexes. They embed these inequality-adjusted social welfare functions...

"Severance pay, a program that provides compensation to workers on termination of employment, is the most widely used income protection program for the unemployed--yet it is often blamed for creating economic inefficiencies such as reducing employment and limiting access to jobs for...

Argentina approaches its bicentennial as an independent republic and has a window of opportunity in social protection policy. Following the most serious economic crisis in its history during 2001-02, the country mobilized an effort to provide income support to the population in need. Now, as...

"Since the early 1990s, several states in India have introduced financial incentive programs to discourage son preference among parents and encourage investment in daughters' education and health. This study evaluates one such program in the state of Haryana, Apni Beti Apna Dhan (Our Daughter,...

"A variety of theories of skill formation suggest that investments in schooling and other dimensions of human capital will have lower returns if children do not have adequate levels of cognitive and social skills at an early age. This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer...