In the past 50 years, the world accelerated its transition out of long-term demographic stability. As infant and child mortality rates fell, populations began to soar. In most countries, this growth led to falling fertility rates. Although fertility has fallen, the population continues to...

We revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy. Existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables....

This paper shows that differences in fertility behavior between African countries can be traced back to colonial institutions. Exploiting the arbitrary division of ancestral ethnic homelands and the resulting discontinuity in institutions across the British-French colonial borders, we find that...

The microfinance industry is itself becoming a global phenomenon. The proliferation of microfinance programmes - and in particular of a single loan product - has been accelerated by a global publicity campaign, the MicroCredit Summit. Women were to be targeted, but it is clear that women do not...

Financial liberalization Policies in the 1990s were intended to raise formal sector interest rates, enhance competition and expand access for users. This article investigates patterns of provision and use in a local financial market in Karatina, Kenya, at the end of the 1990s after a period of...

Enables teams of engineering, science, and management students to work with the top management of international high-tech start-ups and gain hands-on experience in starting and running a new enterprise outside the United States. Lectures expose students to the issues and policies that affect the...

Background: In many geographic regions, both in developing and in developed countries, the number of health workers is insufficient to achieve population health goals. Financial incentives for return of service are intended to alleviate health worker shortages: A (future) health worker enters...

In many countries worldwide, health worker shortages are one of the main constraints in achieving population health goals. Financial-incentive programmes for return of service, whereby participants receive payments in return for a commitment to practise for a period of time in a medically...

This paper examines the generation and management of municipal solid waste (MSW) through the lens of economics. We estimate that the global burden of MSW amounted to 1.3 billion metric tons in 1990, or 0.67 kilograms of waste per person per day. Industrial countries account for a...

This study examines the claim that the AIDS epidemic will slow the pace of economic growth. We do this by examining the association, across fifty-one developing and industrial countries for which we were able to assemble data, between changes in the prevalence of AIDS and the rate of growth of...