This paper provides a fresh look at informal employment, a phenomenon of renewed interest to policy makers and researchers alike. It finds that informal employment is likely to stay, is sometimes a voluntary choice, can offer better working conditions than formal employment and is very...

This paper examines the relationship between household structures, the institutions that shape them and physical and human capital accumulation using household and individual data from China, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Household structures differ greatly across countries and are very...

Over recent years, a number of emerging creditors have increased their aid and lending to Africa’s Low-Income Countries (LICs). This has fed worries that new official lenders may be undoing years of international efforts to rein in over-indebtedness in Africa, to reduce the continent’s...

The southern Mediterranean region faces one of the most important water crises in the world. The combination of aridity, foreign dependency, climate change, misallocation of the resources and escalating human demand make water supply a primary issue for health, economy and poverty reduction. In...