In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank puts banks in areas where gains from switching from farming to nonfarm enterprises favor the poor. Other banks put more weight on potential gains to the nonpoor. Ravallion and Wodon assess whether the placement of bank branches in Bangladesh responds to unexploited...

Ravallion tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm-household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...

In theory, the informational advantage of decentralizing the eligibility criteria for a federal antipoverty program could come at a large cost to the program's performance in reaching the poor nationally. Whether this happens in practice depends on the size of the local-income effect on the...

The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...