"Starting with a general impact indicator as an evaluation criterion, Essama-Nssah offers an integrative framework for a unified discussion of various concepts and measures of pro-poor growth emerging from the current literature. He shows that whether economic growth is considered pro-poor...

"The decision not to launch negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on three of the Singapore Issues in the so-called July 2004 package provides an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base on which proposals for further international collective action may be drawn. This paper...

Higher levels of the state can catalyze the development effectiveness of local administrations and communities, forming alliances with them and improving development outcomes while also gaining legitimacy and popular support. With creative political thinking it is possible to effect rapid change...

"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The "Western middle class" is defined as those who are not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people...

"Prevailing measures of relative poverty put an implausibly high weight on relative deprivation, such that measured poverty does not fall when all incomes grow at the same rate. This stems from the (implicit) assumption in past measures that very poor people incur a negligible cost of social...

"The spike in food prices between 2005 and the first half of 2008 has highlighted the vulnerabilities of poor consumers to higher prices of agricultural goods and generated calls for massive policy action. This paper provides a formal assessment of the direct and indirect impacts of higher...

"The benefits of financial development and globalization have come with continuing fragility in financial sectors. Periodic crises have had real but heterogeneous welfare impacts and not just for poor people; indeed, some of the conditions that foster deep and persistent poverty, such as lack of...