This study takes as its starting point what Gunnar Myrdal had to say about Viet Nam in the context of his seminal work, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, published in 1968. Myrdal pointed to the decisive nature of the Vietnamese people; and subsequent developments, which are...

Little is known about the extent to which public spending is targeted towards the poor in Mozambique. The objective of the present paper is to assess whether public expenditures on education and health, in particular, are successful at reaching the poorer segments of the Mozambican population....

This paper identifies the key causal factors behind farmers’ marketing decisions in Mozambique. A two-step decision making process is modelled. Farmers decide, first, whether or not to participate in the market and, second, how much to market. The model is estimated using a Heckman switching...

The poverty mapping methodology for estimating welfare rankings from small areas has proven to be useful in guiding allocation of government funds, regional planning, and general policy formulation. Nevertheless, poverty mapping also suffers from a series of by now well recognized shortcomings....

Mozambique has achieved remarkable macroeconomic success over recent decades, boasting one of the world's highest rates of GDP growth. However, absolute poverty remains persistent, spilling over into social unrest. To better understand the link between aggregate growth and household welfare,...

Measuring poverty remains a complex and contentious issue. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty rates are higher, information bases typically weaker, and the underlying determinants of welfare relatively volatile. This paper employs recently collected data on household...