This study uses variables from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Centre's Gender, Institutions and Development (GID) Database to construct the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and its subindices <italic>Family code, Civil liberties, Physical integrity, Son...</italic>

This study addresses gender differentials in labour market outcomes in developing countries. There is emerging evidence that even though women in developing countries increasingly enter the labour force, they often end up in jobs with low pay, low security and limited social mobility. We find...

Over the last two decades, many countries around the world have been enthusiastically embarking on the path of decentralization. However, because of a preconceived idea that decentralization will automatically result in efficient allocation of public resources and due to the absence of an...

Decentralising health services – the transfer of power and responsibility from the central to the local level should help the poor if local resources, accountability and governance are in good shape. The process in China and India had negative effects because local governments remained...

This paper discusses the role of private health insurance (PHI) in developing countries. Three major findings emerge from a comprehensive and systematic review of the performance of PHI in five regions of the developing world. First, PHI involving pre-payment and risk sharing currently only...

The majority of Sub-Saharan African citizens - informal sector workers and the rural population - have never had access to wage-based social health insurance or privately run health insurance. As a response to the lack of social security, to the negative side-effects of user fees introduced in...

This paper analyzes the importance of legal property documents in providing tenure security, enhancing agricultural investment incentives and easing access to credit. While theory predicts that better property rights on land can increase investment through increased security, enhanced trade...

This paper examines the relationship between household structures, the institutions that shape them and physical and human capital accumulation using household and individual data from China, Indonesia, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Household structures differ greatly across countries and are very...