Despite historically high rates of economic growth in South Asia over the last two decades, the extent of informality remains large and widespread. This paper asks why that is, why informality needs to be addressed, and how it can be addressed. The central thrust of this paper is to emphasize...

In January, 2005, a group of analysts and activists met in Gujarat at the invitation of SEWA to discuss papers presented at a conference on Membership Based Organizations of the Poor. The details of the conference are available at http://wiego.org/ahmedabad/. Somewhat unusually for academic...

So what’s social policy got to do with economic growth? Quite a lot, it would appear, if one takes the results of cross-country growth regressions at face value, as they are by many social policy analysts, even as they criticize the findings of the economic policy part of the very same...

What is the rationale for the coexistence of Global Financial Institutions (like the World Bank) and Regional Financial Institutions (like the Regional Development Banks)? This paper conceptualizes the differences between these entities and develops a framework for assessing their comparative...

A group of development analysts – researchers, activists, and practitioners - engaged in an unusual exercise in early 2004. They had a dialogue about labor market, trade and poverty issues, but they preceded the dialogue with exposure to the realities of the lives of six remarkable women in...