Despite the recovery of economic growth in Latin America during the 1990s, rising unemployment, high informality rates and sluggish wages lie at the root of high inequality and poverty. This paper looks at changes in hourly earnings from the early 1990s to the early 2000s in three relatively...

?Come and Hope with Me!? This was the rallying call by South African Mongane Serote to draw the world?s attention to the battle fought by his people against Apartheid. It is in this spirit that we invite readers to explore this special edition of Policy in Focus. This issue is dedicated to the...

The Bolsa Família Programme (Programa Bolsa Família ? PBF) is a monthly cash transfer from the Brazilian federal government to poor and extremely poor families enrolled in the Single Registry of Social Programmes. Since 2009, transfers last for a minimum period of two years, regardless of...

The economics profession has long debated whether there is a trade-off between growth and equity. Countries that pursued inequality-reducing strategies have been warned that growth will be affected, and hence that poverty increases. The harbingers of doom advocated a growth-focused strategy....

At the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, the African Union stated that ?the post-Busan agenda for Africa is in essence a programme to reduce aid dependency and ultimately exit aid? (AU, 2011: 11). This One Pager sketches out the attributes of an aid exit strategy to inform such an...

This paper analyses macroeconomic aspects of exit from aid-dependence. By ?exit from aid?, we mean substantial and enduring decline over time in Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The relevant macroeconomic variables are identified by systematically...