The paper discusses key challenges faced throughout the Asia and the Pacific region as a number of its developing economies graduate from low-income status to middle-income status at the same time as the region remains home to the majority of the world's poor people and a number of fragile...

The Asia-Pacific region includes a majority of the world's population and many of its most rapidly growing economies. It is also home to the world's largest number of extremely poor people, many fragile states, and unsustainable environmental practices. The region has increased its influence in...

The informal sector represents an important part of the economy and the labor market in many countries, especially developing countries. Measurements of the informal sector are of intrinsic interest in their own right and contribute toward exhaustive measures of gross domestic product (GDP)....

Women’s ability to accumulate wealth is often attributed to whether they have property rights; i.e., a legal personality to own and manage property. In this paper we argue that basic property rights are insufficient; whether women are able to accumulate wealth also depends upon the marital and...

Participation rates for farm women in off-farm labor markets continue to increase, as does their participation in making major farm decisions such as whether to buy or sell land, adopt a new production practice or invest in farm equipment. Data from the Survey of U.S. Farm Women conducted in...

This paper assesses agricultural household-firm unit models to determine a useful typology for agricultural policy assessment that draws upon their use. Both standard and bargaining models for analyzing household decisions, including production, consumption, labor, credit, fertility and child...

Using a bargaining framework, this paper analyzes the impact of access to credit on household labor allocation and on consumption expenditures in rural Malawi. The labor participation decisions of married men and women and female heads are estimated using random-effects probit models, and are...