Many countries have been affected by food and oil price shocks. Rising energy costs have manifested themselves through higher prices of gas at the pump and through price increases for many other goods such as kerosene and transport. But in some countries there has also been some degree of...

When assessing the impact of changes in food prices on poverty, it is important to consider food producers (who may benefit from an increase in prices) as well as consumers (who loose out when the price increases), with a focus on poor consumers and producers. In the case of rice in Liberia...

The authors provide an empirical analysis of the determinants of three child-health outcomes related to the Millennium Development Goals: the infant mortality rate, the child mortality rate, and the prevalence of malnutrition. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, they go beyond...

Indigenous peoples are among the poorest in Latin America, and it is often argued that social policies do not reach them. At the same time, several countries have implemented in recent years new programs for poverty reduction that should have benefited the indigenous. In this paper, we use data...

Provincial and state-level analyses are conducted using panel data sets for Argentina and Mexico to assess the efficiency of provinces and states in improving health and education outcomes. Stochastic frontier estimation methods are used to determine optimal outcomes that could be reached with...

A limitation of most empirical cross-country studies that focus on determinants of gdp or gdp growth is that they fail to distinguish explicitly between inputs used in production and conditions that facilitate production. For example, physical capital, human capital, and labor are production...

The spike in global food prices in 2008 led to significantly higher food prices across the developing world. Global commodity prices have since fallen but remain volatile, and local food prices remain high in many countries. The authors review the evidence on the potential impact of higher food...

Together with reductions in indirect taxes on food imports, cash for work programs were one of the main responses implemented by African governments following the food, fuel, and financial crisis of recent years. The main objective of those programs was to help the poor cope with the various...