Donor agencies and policy makers tend to agree that increased access of women to education, health, credit, formal legal rights and employment opportunities, in conjunction with economic growth, will substantially improve the socio-economic role of women in developing countries. This paper...

This paper analyses the effect of fiscal decentralisation on health outcomes in China using a panel data set with nationwide county-level data. We find that counties in more fiscally decentralised provinces have lower infant mortality rates than counties where the provincial government remains...

In recent years, the role of institutions for development has received considerable attention from development researchers, policy makers and practitioners. This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of institutions on growth and other development outcomes. Most of the reviewed studies find a...

Poor people lack access to health care with a negative impact on their dignity, human capital formation and their risk-management options. Recently an emerging movement of community-based health insurance schemes has attracted the attention of policy makers and researchers as it seems that these...

This paper provides a fresh look at informal employment, a phenomenon of renewed interest to policy makers and researchers alike. It finds that informal employment is likely to stay, is sometimes a voluntary choice, can offer better working conditions than formal employment and is very...

Decentralisation has been advocated by donors and development agencies as an important factor broadening citizen participation and improving local governance, thereby promoting poverty reduction from the bottom up. On the basis of a comprehensive review of 19 country case studies documented in...