This paper addresses the following question: why are we still arguing about globalisation? It analyses the recent evolution of debates relating to the impact of globalisation on poverty and economic growth in developing countries. A stock-take of selected cross-country econometric research is...

This paper discusses the measurement of poverty and well-being. A historical overview is given of the last fifty years. This is followed by discussion of three groupings of indicators: those measures based primarily on economic well-being; those based on non-economic well-being and composite...

Middle-income countries (MICs) are now home to most of the world’s extreme poor—the billion people living on less than $1.25 a day and a further billion people living on between $1.25 and $2. At the same time, many MICs are also home to a drastically expanding emerging middle or...

What exactly is 'economic marginalization'? How should one conceptualize it, and what are the implications of such conceptualization? Economic marginalization can be conceptualized as outcome or as process (or structure). On outcomes, marginalization can be a static description, or a dynamic...

Textbook analysis tells us that in a competitive labor market, the introduction of a minimum wage above the competitive equilibrium wage will cause unemployment. This paper makes two contributions to the basic theory of the minimum wage. First, we analyze the effects of a higher minimum wage in...

This paper develops a framework for thinking about the policy challenge of scaling up small scale interventions, governmental and non-governmental, that address poverty reduction successfully. The framework sees scaling up as addressing different components of market failure, government failure...

In this note we approach the question of relative poverty from a different angle. Fixing the poverty line, we ask: What is the extent of poverty relative to the resources available in the society to eradicate it? We argue that the same level of poverty is “worse†if the resources...

History matters, and it matters in important and interesting ways for policy  today. But it is not just actual events in the past. It is how they are recorded, interpreted, ...

The informality discourse is large and vibrant, and is expanding rapidly. But there is a certain conceptual incoherence to the literature. New definitions of informality compete with old definitions leading to a plethora of alternative conceptualisations. While some individual studies may apply...

This essay examines the evolution of thinking on development and development policy, with a special focus on economic issues, in the last fifty years. In particular, it explores the interaction between ideology and experience in determining the course of economic thinking and policy on...