Because most parents send their children to work when compelled by poverty, one would expect a rise in adult wage to lower child labor. However, if the rise in wage is achieved by a minimum wage law, its impact can be intriguing. It can, for instance, cause some adults to be unemployed, and send...

According to theory, a member of a collective-action household may or may not share knowledge with others in that household. Shared income gains from shared knowledge may well be offset by a shift in the balance of power within the family. But do literate members of the household share the...

The authors use the collective model of the household and show, theoretically, that as the woman's power rises, child labor will initially fall,but beyond a point it will tend to rise again. A household with a balanced power structure between the husband and the wife is least likely to send its...

The authors construct a model of second-generation rent control, describing a regime that does not permit rent increases for sitting tenants--or their eviction. When an apartment becomes vacant, however, the landlord is free to negotiate a new contract with a higher rent. They argue that this...

The authors present a new approach to evaluating the level of effective literacy in a region or country, one that takes into account the presence in a household of a literate person. They characterize the approach and give an empirical illustration of its use. They designed the new measures of...

The authors analyze the example of a landlord, a moneylender, and a tenant (the landlord having access to finance on the same terms as the money lender). It is natural to assume that the landlord has first claim on the tenant's output (as a rule, if they live in the same village, he may have...

At least 120 million of the world's children aged 5 to 14 worked full-time in 1995, most of them under hazardous, unhygienic conditions, for more than 10 hours a day. This is an old problem worldwide but particularly so in Third World countries in recent decades. What has changed, with...

The supply behavior of labor often depends on the demand conditions prevailing in the labor market. If demand is inadequate, households may send additional household members, who otherwise would not have worked, to look for work, for fear the main income earner may lose his job. The authors...

The World Bank Group recently adopted two overarching goals -- the end of extreme, chronic poverty in the world by 2030 and the promotion of shared prosperity in every society. The paper examines the normative properties of these goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their implications for...

The paper is about the art of exchange rate management by central banks. It begins by reviewing the diversity of objectives and practices of central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market. Central banks typically exercise discretion in determining when and to what extent to intervene....