Inefficient cookstoves contribute to deforestation and global climate change, require substantial time (usually of women and girls) collecting wood or money for fuel and lead to just under two million deaths a year. We examined the effect of solar ovens on fuel use, time spent collecting wood,...

Today, more than 50 years after the Rome Treaty, the EU has made great strides in its’ economic integration and liberalization of movement of goods and people. International trade theory predicts deepening economic integration inside the European Union will increase regional trade and have...

Computers were provided to randomly selected districts participating in a household survey in Vietnam to assess the impact on data quality of entering data within a day or two of completing the interview rather than several weeks later in the provincial capital. Provision of computers had no...

International aid agencies and almost all economists agree that economic growth is necessary for reducing poverty, yet some economists question whether it is sufficient for poverty reduction. Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth in the 1990s, but a modest increase in inequality during that...

The paper proposes an alternative index of relative deprivation which allows for selection of the reference group and imperfect information, two central elements of modern theories of social justice. An application to real data and a simulation on artificial data illustrate the use and some...

The paper uses a range of methods to assess changes in income, poverty and income distribution between 2001 and 2002 in Kazakhstan. It is found that outstanding GDP growth has been translated into very modest growth in mean household income. However, both income poverty and inequality have...

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the...

“Growth is good for the poor” is a ubiquitous statement and one generally backed by theory, research and history. In the long-run, growth reduces poverty. Yet, growth in output - per se - is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poverty reduction in the short-term. The paper...

The paper defines the Gini index as the sum of individual contributions where individual contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of each individual from all other members of society. Among various possible forms of individual contributions to the Gini found in the literature, we...