The present paper seeks to dissect the significance of micro-credit in empowering women. It starts with a brief discussion on the role of micro-credit in poverty alleviation in general, widely acclaimed in contrast to the top-down policies. The concept of empowerment is defined from different...

Tamil Nadu in India has a glorious tradition of recognizing the importance of empowering women over several centuries. The State fares reasonably well (above the all-India level) in terms of indicators such as female literacy, girls enrollment, female life expectancy, and women’s access to...

The concept of women empowerment was the outcome of several important critiques and debates generated by the women’s movement throughout the world, and particularly in the developing countries. In essence, the 1980s saw the rise of stringent feminist critiques of development strategies and...

This paper presents the results of a study of opinion on attitude toward whether the world is better off or worse off because of science and technology. The most recent wave of World Values Survey data was used. Countries were ranked by mean score. The sample size was gathered in 60 countries...

There has been a deep-rooted view that economic rents are the main cause of high levels of economic inequality, but if economic rents are temporary, they may not be the cause. By employing numerical simulations, I show that even if economic rents are temporary, they can generate a high level of...

This paper studies social welfare in a heterogeneous population under the criteria of efficiency and sustainable heterogeneity. As is well known, heterogeneity in time preference results in substantial inequality. This paper shows that, even if households have heterogeneous preferences, there is...

This paper studies social welfare in a heterogeneous population under the criteria of efficiency and sustainable heterogeneity. As is well known, heterogeneity in time preference results in substantial inequality. This paper shows that, even if households have heterogeneous preferences, there is...

We develop a model of preference aggregation where people's psychological characteristics are mutable (hence, potential objects of individual or social choice), their preferences may be incomplete, and approximate interpersonal comparisons of well-being are possible. Formally, we consider...

This paper explains how to build Lorenz Curves for income distributions and discusses their use for inequality measurement. A short conceptual background, a step-by-step procedure and a simple numerical example illustrate how to calculate and draw Lorenz Curves. A discussion on the use of Lorenz...

This paper illustrates how Lorenz Curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds, within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. After highlighting some drawbacks of using specific functional forms of the Social...