The explosion of informal entrepreneurial activity during Mongolia's transition to a market economy represents one of the most visible signs of change in this expansive but sparsely populated Asian country. To deepen our understanding of Mongolia's informal sector during the transition, the...

The remarkable performance of the Irish economy in recent years has attracted much attention. Within a 10-year period the economy went from an 18 percent unemployment rate to nearly full employment, while the ratio of debt to GDP fell from 120 percent to less than 50 percent. Inevitably, this...

Corporatization, a hybrid between public sector ownership and privatization, is an organizational form that is increasingly being adopted in the social sectors. In the health sector, the high costs of public hospitals, new technological developments, changes in demand for primary and secondary...

There are three potential levels of government activity in the health sector: regulation, finance, and direct provision of services, with the government owning and managing hospitals and primary care clinics. Eid focuses on service provision. In recent years corporatization has been introduced...

The authors examine the effects of local inequality on property and violent crime in South Africa. Their findings are consistent with economic theories relating inequality to property crime, and also with sociological theories that imply that inequality leads to crime in general. Burglary rates...

The author focuses on the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play in improving gender equality, so as to enhance long-term economic growth. Employing OLS and IV panel regressions with country fixed-effects, he shows that increases in the level of ICT infrastructure...

Pensions are retirement income. They offer protection in case you live long enough to quit collecting a paycheck and can stop working. In the United States, pensions are provided by both public and private sectors. Private sector pension funds are the largest formal financial institution for...

The authors examine how domestic violence may be used as a bargaining instrument, to extract larger dowries from a spouse's family. The phrase"dowry violence"refers not to the paid at the time of the wedding, but to additional payments demanded by the groom's family after the marriage. The...

The authors study the impact of governance and administrative factors on communicable disease prevention in the Indian state of Karnataka using survey data from administrators, frontline workers, and elected local representatives. They identify a number of key constraints to the effective...

The author analyzes decentralization reforms in the education sector in Latin America (their status, impact, and ongoing challenges) by making use of the accountability framework developed by the World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. She starts by identifying three...