"The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household...

"Market-oriented reforms of infrastructure in developing countries tend to focus primarily on commercially viable services in urban areas. Nevertheless, an increasing number of countries are beginning to experiment with extending the market paradigm to infrastructure services in rural areas that...

A change in the transport sector's current approach to selecting rural road investments is warranted. A proposed approach builds on some of the poverty-focused "hybrid" methods found in recent rural road appraisals, recognizing that an important share of the benefits to the poor from rural roads...

"The author examines, taking into account the urban-rural divides, the changes and welfare implications of income diversification in Zimbabwe following macroeconomic policy changes and droughts of the early 1990s. Data from two comparable national income, consumption and expenditure surveys in...

"Migration reshapes rural economies in ways that may go beyond the contribution of migrant remittances to household income. Consumption and investment expenditures by migrant-sending households may transmit some of the impacts of migration to others inside and outside the rural economy, and they...