The Russian Federation's population has been declining since 1992, but recently the decline appears to be over. Although fertility has risen since the 2007 introduction of the family policy package, which focused on stimulating second and higher-order births, total fertility rates still remain...

In many countries safety nets consist predominantly of universal subsidies on food and fuel. A key question for policy makers willing to shift to targeted safety nets is under what conditions middle-class citizens would be supportive of redistributive programs. Results from a behavioral...

This paper uses data from the Integrated Values Survey, the Life in Transition Survey, and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to analyze the relation between age and subjective well-being in the Europe and Central Asia region. Although the results generally confirm the findings of...

Much of the academic debate on the effectiveness of foreign aid is centered on the relationship between aid and growth. Different aid-growth studies find conflicting results: aid promotes growth everywhere; aid has a zero or negative impact on growth everywhere; or the effect of aid on growth...

The actual distribution of world income across countries is extremely unequal, much higher than the within country inequality faced by most countries. The question studied in this paper is: How do international policies on aid, trade, and factor movements affect the international distribution of...

The authors examine the allocation of foreign aid by 41 donor agencies, bilateral and multilateral. Their policy selectivity index measures the extent to which a donor's assistance is targeted to countries with sound institutions and policies, controlling for per capita income and population....