This note reviews the challenges in Mexico s social protection system and possible options to achieve an integral and effective system that is more than the sum of its parts. Mexico s social protection system includes contributory social security schemes, social assistance programs, and labor...

Since its emergence from a turbulent post-communist transition, Albania has achieved remarkable progress in economic and social development. Governance improvements, especially in the effectiveness of public administration, have been instrumental to the country's impressive economic performance...

"Quisumbing and Yohannes use the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey to examine the gender dimensions of public works. They use three rounds of a panel conducted in 1994--95 to explore the determinants of participation in, days worked, wages, and earnings from wage labor, food-for-work (FFW), and...

The World Bank's Road Maintenance Group project in the Lao People's Democratic Republic offered road maintenance jobs to women in remote villages, targeting the poorest households. The project had three objectives: to increase the longevity of new roads, mitigate poverty, and empower...

"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...