The main objective of the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) was to assess the impact of transition on people, and so the survey questionnaire covered four main themes. First, it collected personal information on aspects of material well-being, including household expenditures, possession of...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

This dissertation studies equilibrium matching patterns in the marriage and labor markets when agents have heterogeneous preferences over partner's traits. Economic analysis of matching has previously focused largely on equilibria obtained when agents have homogeneous preferences. While this...

There is a positive and significant correlation of many traits, such as age, religion, socioeconomic status, and education, among spouses. Becker (1973) shows that positive assortative matching – which results in a perfect correlation of traits in spouses – is optimal if the traits...

Bangladesh boasts a wide array of targeted food assistance programs that strive to achieve a number of important developmental objectives. Findings from the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey suggest that these programs are reasonably well-targeted towards the poor. Most of the...

Analysis of data from various Bangladesh Household Expenditure Surveys suggests considerable progress at poverty reduction during the 1990s. About 50 percent of the country’s population lived below the poverty line in 2000 compared to 59 percent in 1991–2. Poverty in rural areas...