Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly...

Most emerging markets do not borrow much internationally in their own currency, although doing that has been argued as an attractive insurance mechanism. This phenomenon, commonly labeled"the original sin", has mostly been interpreted as evidence of the countries'inability to borrow in domestic...

The Republic of Congo, an oil rich country in Central Africa, has made substantial progress in the past decade in stabilizing the economy and achieving high growth rates. However, despite reaching middle-income country status in 2006, the economy is not diversified, poverty remains pervasive,...

They are being hailed as the new Holy Grail of economic development. The success of special economic zones (SEZ) in general and specialized ones in particular (industrial and technology parks) in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Japan, the United...

The objective of this paper is to inform Liberia's medium-term growth and development strategy for 2012-17 and its National Vision: Liberia Rising 2030, both of which are under preparation. The analysis is based on MAMS (Maquette for MDG [Millennium Development Goal]) Simulations, a computable...

This paper measures the economic impact of social pressure to share income with kin and neighbors in rural Kenyan villages. The authors conduct a lab experiment in which they randomly vary the observability of investment returns. The goal is to test whether subjects reduce their income in order...

This article evaluates the effect of the overdraft facility (or line of credit) policy by comparing a large sample of overdraft facilitated firms and matched non-overdraft facilitated firms from Eastern Europe at the sector level. The sample firms are compared with respect to rates of different...

The 20th Human Development Report has introduced a new version of its famous Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI aggregates country-level attainments in life expectancy, schooling and income per capita. Each year's rankings by the HDI are keenly watched in both rich and poor countries. The...

The economy of Moldova, which has one of the lowest levels of gross national income per capita in the World Bank Europe and Central Asia region, is strongly linked to the outside world, especially to the neighboring countries of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. This...

According to T.W. Schultz, the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create"disequilibria."In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to...