The authors assess whether the placement of bank branches in Bangladesh responds to unexploited potential for nonfarm rural development. They compare the branch location choicesof a large new private nonprofit bank, the famous Grameen Bank, with those of more traditional government banks. They...

The author examines the extent to which micro-credit reduces poverty and vulnerability through a case study of BRAC, one of the largest providers of micro-credit to the poor in Bangladesh. Household consumption data collected from 1,072 households is used to show that the largest effect on...

As interesting and difficult as it is to allocate tax burdens to individuals, the profession knows even less about allocating benefits. The authors survey the literature on benefit incidence since DeWulf's (1975) review, focusing on the methodology and results of benefit incidence analysis in...

The international capital market as it has been evolving provides an opportunity for developing countrieslike India to attract the required capital inflow for accelerating their pace of development, manage their foreign exchange assets and liabilities to their advantage and develop export...

How has the labor market responded to changes in macroeconomic conditions and related government policies? And to what extent has government intervention affected the microeconomic functioning of the labor market. Geographical immobility of workers does not seem to hinder adjustment. Labor is...

Because of politics, some economic policy reforms are adopted and pursued in the developing world, and others are delayed, and resisted. Economic reform is inherently a political act: It changes the distribution of benefits in society, benefiting some social groups, and hurting others. Social...

This paper contains a numerical listing of working papers produced by the Central Vicepresidencies. Each citation contains a brief abstract, and the contact point for the paper.

This paper undertakes a statistical analysis of the effect of minimum wages (MWs) on different population groups. The underlying question for this analysis relates to the probability bias exerted by certain protective government regulations in terms of the unemployment prospects of specific...

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...

The causal link between finance and growth is one of the most striking empirical macroeconomic relationships uncovered in the past decade. As this branch of the literature matures, the focus shifts from growth to other aspects of economic prosperity, and from financial depth to multidimensional...