As seen from the year 2001, economic policy in developing and post-socialist economies during the preceding 10-15 years had one dominating theme - external "liberalization" or the drastic lowering or removal of long-standing barriers to almost all international transactions in markets for goods...

Only recently, 20 years after transition to a market system, has Russia regained a similar production level it had achieved on the eve of transition in 1991. This may sound surprising, given its low productivity under central planning which dropped even l

This paper reviews income distribution in developing countries in recent decades. On average, before-tax income distribution is less unequal in developing countries than it is in industrial countries. However, unlike industrial countries, developing countries in general have not been able to use...

The transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union has been associated with greater inequality and social stratification. This paper prepared within the UNU/WIDER project on "Income Distribution and Social Structure during the Transition' analyses trends in social...

Much of the vast literature on changes in income distribution in advanced countries during the last two decades attributes these either to globalization, or to skill-biased technology, or to a combination of the two. A transatlantic concensus has emerged to suggest that thes two factors have led...

We use data on inter-generational gains in educational attainment by some 500,000 individuals in 200 West Bengal villages to explore gender-differentiated impacts of land reform on human capital accumulation at the individual level. While there are significant gains (of about 0.3 years for...

Countries need capacity for a variety of reasons, including sustaining economic growth, generating jobs, reducing poverty, effectively managing development programmes, and transforming societies and economies. A lot of effort has been expended to develop

This study addresses the macroeconomic effect of foreign aid on the factors of growth. Specifically, we examine the effects of foreign aid on capital investment (human capital, physical capital) in sub-Saharan Africa. Our methodological approach evaluates

I investigate the relationship between children.s endowment and parental investment using a rich dataset on a cohort of children from Ethiopia, who were surveyed at ages eight, twelve and fifteen. Children.s endowment is measured by scores on tests of cog

This paper explores the intergenerational effects of parental health shocks using longitudinal data from the Young Lives project conducted in Andhra Pradesh, India. It is found that health shocks to poorer parents reduce investments in children thereby reducing their future earnings, and...