The informality discourse is large and vibrant, and is expanding rapidly. But there is a certain conceptual incoherence to the literature. New definitions of informality compete with old definitions leading to a plethora of alternative conceptualisations. While some individual studies may apply...

While Asia’s success in growth and poverty reduction is to be greatly welcomed, and should be analysed for the lessons it has for other countries, the policy discourse should take on board three key points: (i) the diversity of Asian growth experience; (ii) rising inequality as a threat to...

This paper offers a conceptualisation of social security and income redistribution schemes which highlights the strong overlaps between the two. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to disentangle the two in practice. The major conclusion is that any assessment of one cannot proceed without taking...

This note considers income distribution at two points in time where the population has also changed in some way, constructing three scenarios—population growth, population decline, and a constant population size that nevertheless churns around a constant income distribution to illustrate...

Tignor’s book attempts to give us the measure of the man in his professional life, with enough insight into personal development to help in this task. Lewis comes across as a man of brilliant insight and clear thinking, a man of principle and integrity, but a man of deeply personal...

What exactly is 'economic marginalization'? How should one conceptualize it, and what are the implications of such conceptualization? Economic marginalization can be conceptualized as outcome or as process (or structure). On outcomes, marginalization can be a static description, or a dynamic...

Textbook analysis tells us that in a competitive labor market, the introduction of a minimum wage above the competitive equilibrium wage will cause unemployment. This paper makes two contributions to the basic theory of the minimum wage. First, we analyze the effects of a higher minimum wage in...

This paper develops a framework for thinking about the policy challenge of scaling up small scale interventions, governmental and non-governmental, that address poverty reduction successfully. The framework sees scaling up as addressing different components of market failure, government failure...

In this note we approach the question of relative poverty from a different angle. Fixing the poverty line, we ask: What is the extent of poverty relative to the resources available in the society to eradicate it? We argue that the same level of poverty is “worse†if the resources...

History matters, and it matters in important and interesting ways for policy  today. But it is not just actual events in the past. It is how they are recorded, interpreted, ...