Rapid fertility decline, a strong expansion of female education, and favorable economic conditions should have promoted female labor force participation in developing countries. Yet trends in female labor force participation rates (FLFP) have been quite heterogeneous, rising strongly in Latin...

There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot...

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that it does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. We use a simple approach, which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows to compare the...

Summary One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that it does not take into account inequality within countries. We suggest a methodology which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows comparisons of the level in...

Many microfinance institutions claim to be oriented to a double bottom line, but while methods of financial performance assessment are widely agreed the same cannot be said about social performance. Monitoring social performance is most useful when it reveals variation in both outreach and...