This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. Our res

In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of .what works. in development pol

There are multiple estimates of global monetary and multidimensional poverty, but there are still no estimates of populations at risk of social exclusion worldwide. This paper fills this gap by estimating the share and number of populations at risk of exclusion globally and regionally. It...

In this new version of the database we have included pilot social assistance programmes. A number of pilot cash transfer programmes have been introduced in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the last year or so, and a few more are in the design stage. Their scale and rationale suggest there is a...

This paper presents an estimation of the impacts of microcredit on labor and human capital following a quasi-experiment specifically designed to control for endogeneity and selection bias in the context of urban Mexico. We find important indirect trickle-down effects of credit through labor...

This paper discusses different approaches to the measurement of global interpersonal in equality. Trends in global interpersonal inequality during 1975-2005 are measured using data from UNU-WIDER.s World Income Inequality Database. In order to better unde

Preventable and treatable childhood diseases, notably acute respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases are the first and second leading causes of death and morbidity among young children in developing countries. The fact that a large proportion of chi

This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico.s Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have implicati

This paper develops a model of opportunistic behaviour in which an incumbent government resort to expansionary fiscal and/or monetary stimuli to foster economic growth and thus, maximize the probability of re-election. Using a panel dataset of 51 African

Notwithstanding the unprecedented attention devoted to reducing poverty and fostering human development via scaling up social sector spending, there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical work on the question of whether social spending is effective in