Effective provision of public goods is a key determinant of quality of life. Conventional approaches to poverty measurement look only at private goods, butthis view is too narrow. Access to safe drinking water, sanitation, transport,medical care, and schools is essential both as a direct...

Microfinance continues to play an ever increasing role in approaches topoverty alleviation around the world. Yet despite the attention paid tomicrofinance, the design of credit contracts for small uncollateralized loansremains a bit of a mystery. From its inception, microfinance generated agreat...

The National Health Insurance Scheme (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, RSBY) aims to improve poor people’s access to quality health care in India. This paper looks at the implementation of the scheme in Karnataka, drawing on a large survey of eligible households and interviews with empanelled...

We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit marketimperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, andhistory, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

[...]This paper begins by discussing poverty trends on a global scale -- where the poor are located in the world and how their numbers have been changing over time. It then discusses the relationship of economic growth and income distribution to poverty reduction. Finally, it suggests an...

Institutions that rely on joint liability to facilitate lending to the poor have a long historyand are now a common feature of many developing countries. Economists have proposedseveral theories of joint-liability lending that stress various aspects of its informational andenforcement advantages...

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries though their effectiveness has been hindered by political constraints on...

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries thought their effectiveness has been hindered by political constraints on...

[...]This research takes Iliffe’s suggestion seriously. For the student of Sub-Saharan Africa who has decided to explore a plausible route of causationbetween nutrition and poverty, the most urgent task is to disregard the initialdiscouragement triggered by the scarcity of references. The lack...