In recent years, an important number of impact studies have attempted to examine the effect of credit on income poverty; however, many of these studies have not paid sufficient attention to the problems of endogeneity and selection bias. The few exceptional cases have employed econometric...

This article presents the initial stages of a new evaluation framework for choosing among retirement income strategies. The investigation includes eight retirement income strategies: constant inflation-adjusted withdrawal amounts, a constant withdrawal percentage of remaining assets, a...

This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have implications in terms of reallocation between...

In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in development policy. This paper focuses on a core...

This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. Our results indicate that aggregate shocks have...

This article simulates the savings rates required to meet retirement income goals in the worst-case scenario from overlapping historical periods for savers in 19 developed market countries. In the baseline, workers save for 30 years to replace 50 percent of their pre-retirement net income with...

Valuation-based market timing demonstrates greater potential to improve risk-adjusted returns for conservative long-term investors than given credit by Fisher and Statman (2006). On a risk-adjusted basis, market-timing strategies provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks buy-and-hold...

This paper provides an overview of the political and economic context under which Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades was introduced to prelude the emergence of social assistance in Latin America. The paper identifies four distinctive features of the programme that were revolutionary in their own...

Using the Cambodia Socioeconomic Survey 2004 and employing micro-static simulation techniques, we measure the potential impacts of cash transfer programs for children to identify targeted groups that will have the most effect on poverty and school attendance. We conclude that the largest impacts...

In the first decade of the new century, social transfer programmes emerged as a new paradigm in the fight against poverty in the global South. These programmes currently reach more than 860 million people worldwide. This paper focuses on three policy questions: first, do programme objectives...