The policy reforms called for in the transition from a socialist command economy to a developing market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which is where one finds the bulk of...

The policy reforms called for in the transition from a socialist command economy to a developing market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which is where one finds the bulk of...

Standard methods of impact evaluation often leave significant gaps between what we know about development effectiveness and what we want to know-gaps that stem from distortions in the market for knowledge. The author discusses how evaluations might better address these knowledge gaps and so be...

"The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank's past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty-as judged by what "poverty" means in the world's poorest countries-is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust...