The immediate welfare costs of an economywide crisis can be high, but are there also lasting impacts? And are they greater in some geographic areas than others? The authors study Indonesia’s severe financial crisis of 1998. They use 10 national surveys spanning 1993–2002, each covering...

The authors investigate the methodology used in projections of international poverty - particularly those used in many World Bank documents. The methodology, as developed by Ahluwalia, Carter, and Chenery (1979) in an influential paper, is examined critically and subjected to sensitivity...

When average income rises, the average incomes of the poorest fifth of society rise proportionately. This is a consequence of the strong empirical regularity that the share of income accruing to the bottom quintile does not vary systematically with average income. The authors document this...

Most studies of how inflation affects income distribution focus only on wages or the inflation tax. The authors argue that this approach can be misleading as it ignores important channels through which inflation affects income distribution. The authors present an integrated framework that...

Small states have attracted a good deal of research. The authors test whether micro-states are any different from other states in income, growth, and volatility. They find that, controlling for location, smaller states are actually richer than other states in per capita GDP. This income...

Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled with disastrous consequences. The authors use one mehthodology - cross-country regressions - to account for sub-Saharan Africa's growth performance over the past 30 years and to suggest policies...

The author tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm-household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for non-stationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...

Many cross country studies have been conducted over the last twenty years to explain how various factors affect economic growth rates in the developing countries. The data in these studies - which underlie international economic comparisons and serve as the basis for economic policy...