In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the recent international experience with active labor market programs (ALMPs). Basing the evidence on the growing body of program evaluations, it focuses on the impacts of ALMPs on the subsequent employment and earnings of participants. This...

Two tradeoffs have been widely seen to severely constrain the scope for attacking poverty using redistributive transfers in poor countries: an equity-efficiency tradeoff and an insurance-efficiency tradeoff. The author provides a critical overview of recent theoretical and empirical work that...

High inequality in Africa is something of a paradox: Africa should be a low-inequality continent according to the Kuznets hypothesis (because African countries are poor and agriculture-based), and also because land (the main asset) is widely shared. The author's hypothesis is that African...

This paper presents a Joint Staff Assessment of the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) for Bangladesh. The I-PRSP lays out a broader vision for the future along with a medium-term economic strategy. The IMF staff considers that Bangladesh’s I-PRSP constitutes a cohesive...

This paper presents the Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) for Benin. The IMF staff has determined that Benin’s PRSP contains a credible poverty reduction strategy. The main strengths of the PRSP are the comprehensiveness of the strategic framework and...

The first progress report of the government of Niger on the implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) covers the period January 2002 to June 2003. The implementation of the PRSP has been broadly satisfactory since January 2002, and the report provides a candid review of...