Regulation allows microfinance institutions to evolve more fully into banks, particularly for institutions aiming to take deposits. But there are potential trade-offs. Complying with regulation and supervision can be costly. The authors examine the implications for the institutions profitability...

The authors provide an economic framework to analyze investment in informal housing in developing countries. They consider a simple model of investment in the housing market where investors can choose between two sectors-the formal sector, where physical investment faces no risk of destruction,...

Despite the importance of housing for people's well-being, there has been little work done to assess the causal impact of housing and housing improvement programs on health and welfare. In this paper the authors help fill this gap by investigating the impact of a large-scale effort by the...

Massive privatizations of housing in Europe and Central Asia transition countries have significantly reduced rental tenure choice, threatening to impede residential mobility. Policymakers are intensifying their search for adequate policy responses aimed at broadening tenure choice for more...

Most countries do not use one single type of housing subsidy but combine many of them. The author provides operational criteria that allow evaluation of systems of housing subsidies, both at the individual program level and at the aggregate (country) level. The author examines the public finance...

The focus of this paper is on the demand for housing in urban India. Using rental data, the paper finds that income elasticities of housing demand are high and elastic across time. Hedonic pricing regressions confirm that this high elasticity is driven by high demand for improved water and...

The success of development programs, including water resource projects, depends on two key factors: the role of underlying institutions and the impact synergies from other closely related programs. Existing methodologies have limitations in accounting for these critical factors. This paper fills...

Is the vast army of the self-employed in low income countries a source of employment generation? This paper uses data from surveys in Sri Lanka to compare the characteristics of own account workers (non-employers) with wage workers and with owners of larger firms. The authors use a rich set of...

This paper analyzes data from a randomized experiment on mean returns to capital in Sri Lankan micro-enterprises. The findings show greater returns among men than among women; indeed, returns were not different from zero for women. The authors explore different explanations for the lower returns...

A large share of the world's poor is self-employed. Accurate measurement of profits from microenterprises is therefore critical for studying poverty and inequality, measuring the returns to education, and evaluating the success of microfinance programs. But a myriad of problems plague the...