Viet Nam's ethnic minorities tend to be concentrated in remote areas and have lower living standards than the ethnic majority. How much is this due to poor economic characteristics? Is there a self-reinforcing culture of poverty in the minority group? The authors find that differences in returns...

Redistribution alleviated poverty in India, though growth was quantitatively more important. Improved distribution countervailed the adverse effect of monsoon failure in the late 1980s on rural poverty. However, worsening distribution in Brazil, associated with the macroeconomic shocks of the...