"The benefits of financial development and globalization have come with continuing fragility in financial sectors. Periodic crises have had real but heterogeneous welfare impacts and not just for poor people; indeed, some of the conditions that foster deep and persistent poverty, such as lack of...

"Impact evaluations aim to measure the outcomes that can be attributed to a specific policy or intervention. Although there have been excellent reviews of the different methods that an evaluator can choose in order to estimate impact, there has not been sufficient attention given to questions...

"Argentina was a pioneer of infrastructure reform in the early 1990s. The social dimension of infrastructure services was typically overlooked in the reform process. However, social sensitivities often resurfaced in the years that followed, leading to a series of ad hoc social policy measures...

"Many developing countries assign local governments increasing responsibilities in fighting poverty. This requires local social policy to go beyond the execution of centrally designed and funded education and health programs. Hence, local governments and their partners have both an opportunity...