Countries that have experienced banking crises have adopted oneof two distinct approaches toward the resolution of non-performing assets-a centralized or a decentralized solution. A centralized approach entails setting up a government agency-an asset management company-with the full...

The authors used the policy game approach to gain insight into a problem that has puzzled analysts of high inflation economies. Why are programs based on tight fiscal and monetary policies slow at reducing inflation in high inflation countries? Distinguishing between regimes of rule and...

Public provision of education has often been perceived as universal and egalitarian, but in reality it is not. Political pressure typically results in incidence bias in favor of the rich. The author argues that the bias in political influence resulting from extreme income inequalities is...

Defining vigilance as retrospective voting - where voters evaluate incumbents on their performance during their entire term in office - the author compares voter behavior in local and national elections to make inferences about whether voters are more vigilant in monitoring government at the...

The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. Even though it has been the focus of abundant research over the past five decades, some key policy questions have not found clear answers yet. To what extent is internal...

Growth is pro-poor if the poverty measure of interest falls. According to this definition there are three potential sources of pro-poor growth: (1) a high rate of growth of average incomes; (2) a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes; and (3) a poverty-reducing pattern of...

The authors compare economic performance in the CFA (franc) zone with the economic performance in similar countries outside the CFA zone in recent years. The results of their model estimates indicate that the competitive position for CFA members was weaker in the second half of the 1980s than in...

Most work on the relationship between farm size and productivity strongly suggests that farms that rely mostly on family labor are more productive than large farms operated primarily by hired labor. This study began as an inquiry into how rental and sales markets for agricultural land in the...

The authors report results from a randomized evaluation comparing three school-based HIV/AIDS interventions in Kenya: (1) training teachers in the Kenyan Government's HIV/AIDS-education curriculum; (2) encouraging students to debate the role of condoms and to write essays on how to protect...

The authors analyze empirical information on the nature and magnitude of, and motivation for, international production sharing in East Asia. To do so, they use a largely untapped source of data on inter- and intra-regional trade in parts and components. Some of their findings: East Asian trade...