This paper investigates the relationship between sectoral growth patterns and employment outcomes. A broad cross-country analysis reveals that in middle-income countries, employment responds more to growth in less productive and more labor-intensive sectors. Employment in middle-income countries...

Microcredit loans were traditionally extended to groups of people. However, there is no clear evidence that joint liability does lead to better borrower performance and recent years have seen a shift towards individual liability lending. Utilizing the exogenous shift from individual to joint...

We study a unique microcredit model with zero interest rate and voluntary contributions, used by Akhuwat, a microfinance organization operating in Pakistan since 2001. Borrowers are encouraged to give any amount they wish to the organization every month, in addition to the instalment for the...

The paper focuses on the recent pattern of government expenditure for developing countries and estimates the determinants which may have influenced government expenditure. Using a panel data set for 111 developing countries from 1984 to 2004, this study finds evidence that political and...

This paper studies the characteristics of the workers in the informal economy and whether migrants treat this sector as a temporary location before moving on to the organised or formal sector to improve their life time income and life style. We limit our study to the Indian urban...

One of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals−gender parity in all levels of education−is widely considered to have been attained. However, measuring gender parity only through school enrollment is misleading, as girls may lag behind boys in other educational measures. We investigate...

Using data collected through a telephone-based survey in rural Bangladesh during the height of the pandemic, we present evidence on the effects of COVID-19-led lockdown and school closures on children, focusing on three child-related outcomes: time use of children during the school closure,...

This paper studies the characteristics of the workers in the informal economy and whether internal migrants treat this sector as a temporary location before moving on to the organised or formal sector to improve their lifetime income and living conditions. We limit our study to the Indian urban...

Microcredit is an innovative financial tool designed to reduce poverty and fix credit market imperfections. We use experimental measures of time discounting and risk aversion for villagers in south India to highlight behavioral features of microcredit. Conditional on borrowing from any source,...

Microfinance has been heralded as an effective way to address imperfections in credit markets. From a theoretical perspective, however, the success of microfinance contracts has puzzling elements. In particular, the group-based mechanisms often employed are vulnerable to free-riding and...