Of the 41 HIPCs, 11 are classified by the IMF and World Bank as conflict-affected. Can debt relief reduce the level of violent conflict in these countries? By providing additional resources to finance broad-based public spending, debt relief could help to redress the grievances that contribute...

The standard method of testing for efficient risk-sharing in village economies does not allow one to identify vulnerable households, only to make statements about the average risk in the village, or of sub-groups identifiable on the basis of observables. Here, by working directly with...

This paper explores pitfalls in regression-based inequality decompositions. A simple procedure is developed for rectifying these pitfalls. The procedure does not impose any restrictions on the underlying regression model and it can be applied to any inequality measure(s). Once combined with...

We consider extortion gangs that are mafia-like in their protection of targets, but that are unlike the Mafia in their competition over targets. Does this type of organized crime pay? How are the returns to extortion affected by the number of competing extortionists and the violence they apply?...

A simple two-stage game-theoretic model of conflict is analysed, where the government can send raiders for terrorising the population to flee before the fighting proper begins. The resulting displacement of population reduces the efficiency of the guerrilla in the fight against the government....

How much does economic growth contribute to poverty reduction? I discuss analytical and empirical approches to assess the poverty elasticity of growth, and emphasize that the relationship between growth and poverty change is non-constant. For a given poverty measure, it depends on initial...

The pervasiveness of the illegal copying of software is a worldwide phenomenon. Software piracy implies a huge loss of potential customers of original software buyers, which directly translates into revenue losses for the software industry. Given this, conventional wisdom would suggest the need...

Small states have always been more vulnerable in the global economy. This is so because trade comprises a larger proportion of their economic activity, and because they lack the power to set the terms or make any of the rules that govern globalization. Studies of small states tend to focus on...

This discussion paper presents a methodology to visualize the effects of various influences on the income distribution. The methodology, although not new, has become very popular in the past few years. It is the method of counterfactual simulations. In other words, it is the use of "what if...