There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of ‘globalization’. The paper views the issue through both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country comparisons and aggregate time...

There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of globalization. Ravallion views the issue through both macro and micro empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country comparisons and aggregate time series data. The micro...

While the incidence of extreme poverty in China fell dramatically over 1980-2001, progress was uneven over time and across provinces. Rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor, though migration to urban areas helped. The pattern of growth mattered. Rural economic growth was far...

The geographic location of banks' branches is used to test whether they are responding to unexploited gains from nonfarm rural development in Bangladesh. The branch locations of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank are compared with those of traditional banks. The potential gains from switching out of...

Casual observations and the best data available indicate remarkable geographic differences in levels of living within China. What creates China's poor areas? Are they catching up? What should governments do? The paper provides an overview of recent research addressing these questions. There is...

The immediate welfare costs of an economywide crisis can be high, but are there also lasting impacts? And are they greater in some geographic areas than others? Ravallion and Lokshin study Indonesia's severe financial crisis of 1998. They use 10 national surveys spanning 1993-2002, each covering...