The widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policies. But the basis for this"stylized fact"is questionable, the authors argue. Widely cited evidence of a strong negative correlation between size and consumption per person is...

Transfers to the rural land-poor are widely advocated and used in attempts to reduce rural poverty. Such transfers are believed to be productive, in that the final gain to the poor exceeds the initial transfer. The evidence cited most often to support this view is the negative correlation...

Almost by definition, the basis for development is infrastructure - whether services for human infrastructure (health, education, nutrition) or physical infrastructure (transport, energy, water). Although the infrastructure sectors are diverse, what they have in common is that public policy has...

The outlook for economic development for an important group of middle-income countries has again been buoyed by substantial private capital inflows in the 1990s. As in the 1970s, this development has been met with cautious optimism. It is generally accepted that these countries need resource...

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa remain dependent on a few primary commodities -- coffee, cocoa, cotton, sugar, tea, and tobacco -- for a large share of export earnings. Because demand for these commodities is price-inelastic, production and export expansion can depress world prices and...

This paper contains a numerical listing of working papers prepared by the Poilicy, Research Complex. Each citation contains a brief abstract, and the contact point for the paper.

Understanding how prices and quantities affect investment demand is important in analyzing adjustment policies in many developing countries. Recent literature emphasizes that uncertainty curtails private investment, adding a risk premium - the price of waiting. Several recent empirical studies...

Recent debate about how timber prices affect deforestation has focused mainly on how log export bans (imposed in many developing countries to protect domestic timber processing) affect deforestation. One side argues that the lower domestic timber prices that result from banning log exports...

In principle, financial regulation seeks to remedy recognized deficiencies in a nation's economic, political, and bureaucratic incentivestructures. But the social urgency of particular financial policy problems differ according to a country's stage of development. Regulatory strategies that make...

In recent years, the role of investment funds has increased in most commodity markets. Investment funds, which traditionally deal with financial markets, have been shifting between financial markets and commodity futures markets, as well as among commodity futures markets. The popularity of...