In recent years, a debate about the potential of decentralization for poverty alleviation has set off among academics and policy-makers. It is often claimed that decentralization can be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty. For example, the World Bank explains...

This paper argues that the study of the demand for financial services in developing countries leaves out part of the story if it looks at only one of the three elements of the so-called finance trinity - that is, savings products, loans and insurance - as is largely done in the literature. In...

This paper aims to understand the role of micro-insurance as an element of social protection. It outlines the current status of micro-insurance provision in Ghana and Sri Lanka, two countries with very different socio-cultural backgrounds. It concludes that both countries are unlikely to extend...

Many people around the world live in patrilocal societies. Patrilocality prescribes that women move in with their husbands' parents, relieve their in-laws from housework, and care for them in old age. This arrangement is likely to have labour market consequences, in particular for the women. We...

This paper studies the association between a country's level of financial development and firms' employment growth. We employ an incomplete contract model for evaluating this association. The model proposes that a high level of financial development affects the employment of firms with low...

This paper argues that the study of the demand for financial services in developing countries leaves out part of the story, if it looks at only one of the three elements of the so called finance trinity, i.e. savings products, loans, or insurances, as is largely done in the literature. In...

We examine the role of intergenerational co-residence for female labour supply in a patrilocal society. To account for the endogeneity of women's co-residence with parents or in-laws, we exploit a tradition in Central Asia, namely that the youngest son of a family usually lives with his parents....