The paper is a review of approaches towards technology support for small-scale manufacturing enterprises in developing countries since the 1970s. Early programmes tended to suffer from a number of weaknesses, emanating from inadequate conceptualisation of small firm' competitiveness and the role...

This paper reports labour market returns to education in Bangladesh using national level household survey data. Returns are estimated separately for rural and urban samples, males, females and private sector employees. Substantial heterogeneity in returns is observed; e.g. estimates are higher for...

The 'Montubio' ethnic identity has recently gained notoriety in Ecuador. This paper analyses how this identity emerges from and falls within Ecuador's construction of 'mestizaje' or mixture as a tool for national integration. Given the exclusionary and limited nature of mestizaje in Ecuador, it...

This paper examines recent policy issues relating to foreign investment incentives in the regulatory domain. By 'regulatory incentives' in this context we mean those administrative conditions offered by governments to foreign firms other than special fiscal (eg tax) or financial (eg subsidies)...

Two notions of informal economy are introduced: i) petty unregistered activity andd ii) the unaccounted economic activity of registered firms. The argument concerns the relations between the second type and the state. The informal economy of the powerful achieves order through a multiplicity of...

While there has been a considerable amount of analysis on the impact of structural adjustment policies on poverty and inequality among individuals (or what we define here as vertical inequality - VI), there has been almost none into the impact of structural adjustment on inequality between...

Ethnic minority identities and their associated politics of disadvantage have been a central feature of post-colonial Nigerian politics. Tensions which became manifest in the 1950s have combined with new developments such as the militarization and personalization of state institutions and...

Currently popular multidimensional approaches to poverty face the challenge of being translated into effective poverty reduction strategies. Central to this challenge is identifying policy interventions that can generate mutually reinforcing outcomes across different dimensions. With this aim we...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the financing of investment in order to lay the foundation for subsequent analysis of technology investments by Southern European SMEs. By adapting a variety of approaches to suit this purpose, a number of findings for policy are...

Environmental degradation is a major global problem, and addressing it is a key Millennium Development Goal. Its impacts are not just environmental (e.g., species loss), but also economic (e.g., reduced agricultural productivity), with degradation increasingly cited as a key cause of rural...