Slum upgrading programs are being used by national and city governments in many countries to improve the welfare of households living in slum and squatter settlements. These programs typically include a combination of improvements in neighborhood infrastructure, land tenure, and building...

The authors compare the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading programs with programs that provide slum dwellers with better housing in a new location. Evaluating the welfare effects of slum upgrading and resettlement programs requires estimating models of residential location choice, in...

Slum upgrading programs are being used by national and city governments in many countries to improve the welfare of households living in slum and squatter settlements. These programs typically include a combination of improvements in neighborhood infrastructure, land tenure, and building...

According to T.W. Schultz, the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create "disequilibria." In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to shocks...

We investigate the replacement of the traditional state-centered model of electricity industry organization with a market-oriented neo-liberal model in 83 countries. We argue and find that social actors' ascription of legitimacy to an institutional replacement is central to the replacement's...

Many cities in developing economies, particularly in Africa, are experiencing urbanization without industrialization. This paper conceptualizes this in a framework in which a city can produce non-tradable goods and -- if it is sufficiently competitive -- also internationally tradable goods,...

This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity, using alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin American cities. Although most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact versus...