"This paper proposes that individuals care about the relative income of proximate reference groups. Making use of self-reported life satisfaction as a proxy for unobservable utility, the relative income of siblings is tested for relevance as a reference point for new sample data from Venezuela....

"Formal and informal commercial sex work is a way of life for many poor women in developing countries. Though sex workers have long been identified as crucial in affecting the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, the nature of sex-for-money transactions remains poorly...

"This paper explores how the elimination of Madagascar's Marketing Board in 1995 affected prices paid to farmers, incentives, and regional indicators of poverty and inequality. After steadily losing market share, Madagascar has been able to regain some of the lost ground since the mid-1990s....

This is an internal status report to ESMAP and Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) which summarizes their ongoing work under a joint energy study entitled INGENS - Income Generation through Energy and. Complementary Services. INGENS has proposed (and started to test) a pragmatic,...

High labor tax wedges and slow formal employment growth have combined to make labor tax reform an important economic policy issue in Turkey. This synthesis report presents the results of a series of empirical studies of the impact of a labor tax reform. The analysis was undertaken before the...

"Using recent matched employer-employee data from the manufacturing sector in 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, the authors analyze how the supply of skills and legal origin of the country affect the wage setting process. The wage analysis yields three main findings. First, increasing returns to...

"The authors provide new evidence on the impacts of trade reforms on wages and wage inequality in developing countries. While most of the current literature on the topic achieves identification by comparing outcomes before and after one episode of trade liberalization across industries, they...

"The authors follow the Hellerstein, Neumark, and Troske (1999) framework to estimate marginal productivity differentials and compare them with estimated relative wages. The analysis provides evidence on productivity and nonproductivity-based determinations of wages. Special emphasis is given to...