Using bilateral migration flow data from the 2010 population census of Nepal, this paper provides evidence on the importance of public infrastructure and services in determining migration flows. The empirical specification, based on a generalized nested logit model, corrects for the non-random...

The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the international poverty line. In order to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank’s...

The paper presents the first major update of the international "$1 a day" poverty line, first proposed in 1990 for measuring absolute poverty by the standards of the world's poorest countries. In a new data set of national poverty lines we find that a marked economic gradient only emerges when...

The authors provide new evidence on the extent to which absolute poverty has urbanized in the developing world, and the role that population urbanization has played in overall poverty reduction. They find that one-quarter of the world's consumption poor live in urban areas and that the...

Policy makers in developing countries, including India, are increasingly sensitive to the links between spatial transformation and economic development. However, the empirical knowledge available on those links is most often insufficient to guide policy decisions. There is no shortage of case...

Based on a comprehensive worldwide firm survey, this paper looks at how the business environment and economic agglomeration affect job creation, holding constant conventional determinants of firm growth, such as firm ownership, size, and age. The analysis finds that economic agglomeration is...

During the past two decades many economies have opened their retail sector to foreign direct investment, yet little is known about possible implications of such liberalization on the economies of developing host countries. Using firm-level data from Romania, this study examines how the presence...

Commodity traders are often the focus of popular resentment. Food price hikes in 2007-2008 resulted in protests and food riots, and spurred governments to regulate traders. In March 2011, Government of Bangladesh banned delivery order traders in the edible oils market, citing cartelization, and...

This paper provides evidence on the impacts of agricultural productivity on employment growth and structural transformation of non-farm activities. To guide the empirical work, this paper develops a general equilibrium model that emphasizes distinctions among non-farm activities in terms of...

Central place theory predicts that agglomeration can arise from external shocks. This paper investigates whether gold mining is a catalyst for proto-urbanization in rural Ghana. Using cross-sectional data, the analysis finds that locations within 10 kilometers from gold mines have more night...