The authors analyze the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. They base their analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. The authors extend the existing empirical methodology for...

Although poverty lines are widely used as deflators for inter-group welfare comparisons, their internal consistency is rarely given close scrutiny. A priori considerations suggest that commonly used methods cannot be relied on to yield poverty lines that are consistent in terms of utility, or...

After a decade of slow economic growth Egypt's rate of growth recovered in the late 1990s, averaging more than five percent a year. But the effect of this growth on poverty patterns has not been systematically examined using consistent, comparable household datasets. In this paper, the authors...

This paper addresses the mechanisms by which trade openness affects growth volatility. Using a diverse set of export diversification indicators, it presents strong evidence pointing to an important role for export diversification in reducing the effect of trade openness on growth volatility. The...

This paper adds to aid volatility literature in three ways: First it tests the validity of the aid volatility and growth relationship from various aspects: across different time horizons, by sources of aid, and by aid volatility interactions with country characteristics. Second, it investigates...

Many investments in infrastructure are built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a comprehensive theoretical...

This paper proposes a parametric approach to estimating a dynamic binary response panel data model that allows for endogenous contemporaneous regressors. This approach is of particular value for settings in which one wants to estimate the effects of an endogenous treatment on a binary outcome....

Measuring the poverty and distributional impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not easy, given the multiple channels of impact and the limited availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approaches are of limited use in addressing questions like who are being affected by the...

The extent to which India's poor have benefited from the country’s economic growth has long been debated. This paper revisits the issues using a new series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50 years, and including a 15-year period after economic reforms began in earnest in the...

Many studies have shown that firm growth decreases monotonically with size and age. In this study, the authors investigate employment growth of firms in Turkey with an emphasis on small and medium size enterprises. In Turkey, small and medium size enterprises account for almost 77 percent of...