Liberalising key factor markets is a crucial step in the transition from a socialist control-economy to a market economy. However, the process can be stalled by imperfect information, high transaction costs and covert resistance from entrenched interests. The article studies agricultural land...

This paper examines the effects of risk-induced welfare variability on the expected value of a broad class of stochastic poverty measures. Theoretical conditions are derived for an increase in shared risk to increase expected poverty. The approach is applied to panel data for three villages in...

The widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy. The scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view. We find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in Pakistan when the size elasticity of...

Current knowledge provides little guidance on one of the key questions in evaluating public employment schemes aimed at directly reducing poverty: What are the net income gains to participating workers? This paper offers an answer for rural public employment in two villages in the state of...

It is often argued that child labour comes at the expense of schooling and so perpetuates poverty for children from poor families. To test this claim we study the effects on children's labour force participation and school enrollments of the pure school-price change induced by a targeted...