We evaluate the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively estimated using...

Many developing countries faced macroeconomic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s. The impact of the shocks on welfare depended on the nature of the shock, on initial household and community conditions, and on policy responses. To avoid severe and lasting losses to poor and vulnerable groups,...

In the wake of reforms to establish a free market in land-use rights, Vietnam is experiencing a pronounced rise in rural landlessness. To some observers this is a harmless by-product of a more efficient economy, while to others it signals the return of the pre-socialist class-structure, with the...

We know surprisingly little about the long-run impacts of household electrification. This paper studies the impacts on consumption in rural India over a 17-year period, allowing for both internal and external (village-level) effects. Under our identifying assumptions, electrification brought...

The geographic location of banks' branches is used to test whether they are responding to unexploited gains from nonfarm rural development in Bangladesh. The branch locations of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank are compared with those of traditional banks. The potential gains from switching out of...

Brazil's slow pace of poverty reduction over the last two decades reflects both low growth and a low growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Using GDP data disaggregated by state and sector for a twenty-year period, this paper finds considerable variation in the poverty-reducing effectiveness of...

This paper investigates spatial dimensions of income inequality in Nepal using unit record data from the Living Standards Measurement (LSM) survey of 1995/96. The Gini, Atkinson and generalized entropy indices are used to measure income inequality. The results reveal that per capita income...

Increasingly, firms are considering the adoption of new work practices, such as problem-solving teams, enhanced communication with workers, employment security, flexibility in job assignments, training workers for multiple jobs, and greater reliance on incentive pay. This paper provides...

The authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty-six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies. The productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices, which include...