PPP-based national accounts have become an important part of the database for macroeconomists, development economists, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the...

What are the determinants of the health and of well-being? Income and wealth are clearly part of the story, but does access to health-care have a large independent effect, as the advocates of more investment in health-care, such as the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and...

There is surprisingly little information about the delivery of health care in rural India, and about the relationship, if any, between health care and health status. Some, such as the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization (2001), have argued that better health...

The extent to which growth reduces global poverty has been disputed for 30 years. Although there are better data than ever before, controversies are not resolved. A major problem is that consumption measured from household surveys, which is used to measure poverty, grows less rapidly than...

In recent years, as longer time series of cross-sectional household surveys have become available, it has become possible to look at the consumption and saving behavior of birth cohorts in a number of developing and developed economies. The cohort evidence is singularly appropriate for the...

The World Bank prepares and publishes estimates of the number of poor people in the world. While everyone knows that these numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt, the numbers are arguably important. In an institution where the reduction of poverty is the paramount objective, some overall...

There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues, or of development agencies to learn from their own experience. In...

The Indian national sample surveys collect data on the unit values of a large number of foods which can be used to compute price index numbers that can be compared with the official national price indexes, the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL) for rural India, and the...