To escape from poverty requires assets, be they human, physical, social, or financial. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are designed to help the poor to build assets. Withdrawals from IDAs are matched if used for home purchase, post-secondary education, or self- employment. Participants...

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are special savings accounts designed to help people build assets to reach life goals and to achieve long-term security. Account-holders receive matching funds as they save for purposes such as buying a first home, attending job training, going to college,...

Louisiana legislators recently approved $2 million in funding for a statewide individual development account program aimed at getting low-income hurricane victims back on their feet.

Microfinance—both credit and savings—has potential to improve the well- being of poor women in developing countries. This paper explores practical ways to achieve that potential. Based on lessons from informal saving mechanisms that women already use, the paper proposes two savings services...

This paper presents quantitative and qualitative data regarding the saving and asset-accumulation strategies used by low-income participants in Individual Development Account programs (IDAs). The results of a cross-sectional survey with 298 IDA participants and case studies with 15 IDA...

Financial globalisation has been associated with divergent current account patterns in emerging market economies. While countries in emerging Asia have been running sizeable current account surpluses, countries in emerging Europe have been facing large current account deficits. In this paper we...

Global financial integration has been associated with divergent patterns of real convergence and the current account in emerging markets. While countries in emerging Asia have been running sizeable current account surpluses, countries in emerging Europe have been facing large current account...

The creeping stock market collapse eroded the wealth of funded pension systems. This led to political tensions between generations due to the fuzzy definition of property rights on the pension funds wealth. We argue that this problem can best be resolved by the introduction of generational...

Typescript (photocopy).