Social protection coverage is quite low in Latin America. This situation, irrespective of the type of pension scheme, represents a challenge for public policy since these low levels of affiliation and irregular contribution histories indicate that pensions will be insufficient in the coming...

Poverty is typically measured in different ways in developing and advanced countries. The majority of developing countries measure poverty in absolute terms, using a poverty line determined by the monetary cost of a predetermined basket of goods. In contrast, most analyses of poverty in advanced...

It might seem obvious discovering an asset such as oil or copper would be wonderful news for the country making the find. Yet the opposite is often true. The windfall can bring poverty, civil strife, corruption, inequality, slower growth and undemocratic practices. The phenomenon is known as the...

Decentralisation has been advocated by donors and development agencies as an important factor broadening citizen participation and improving local governance, thereby promoting poverty reduction from the bottom up. On the basis of a comprehensive review of 19 country case studies documented in...

This paper examines the relationship between household structures, the institutions that shape them and physical and human capital accumulation using household and individual data from China, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Household structures differ greatly across countries and are very...

This paper builds on a new database (PRIVMEDA) in order to assess the progress of the privatisation process in the MEDA countries of Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. The first part of the paper offers an overview of the privatisation record from...

High quality institutions lower transaction costs, encourage trust, reinforce property rights and avoid the exclusion of sections of the population. Overcoming institutional bottlenecks that constrain entrepreneurial activities and the development of the private sector is a prerequisite for...

Les infrastructures de transport ont été dangereusement négligées ces dernières années en Afrique. Le manque d’infrastructures de transport est un frein à l’intégration économique et à la réduction de la pauvreté.

Il paraît évident de prime abord que la découverte d’un gisement de pétrole ou de cuivre est une très bonne nouvelle. Mais il arrive souvent que cette promesse tourne mal. La manne des ressources naturelles peut générer de la pauvreté, de la discorde, de la corruption, des...

Avec, en 2005, et pour la troisième année consécutive, des performances satisfaisantes, l’embellie des économies africaines semble devoir se prolonger. Cependant la persistance d’un prix élevé du pétrole constitue à moyen terme un risque important pour les importateurs africains...