"Like many developing countries, China and India followed development strategies biased in favor of the urban sector over the last several decades. These development schemes have led to overall efficiency losses due to misallocation of resources among rural and urban sectors. It also led to...

The dynamic rural nonfarm sector in China has been a major contributor to the country's remarkable growth, while in India the growth in output and employment in this sector has been rather stagnant. The paper argues that the observed patterns in the rural nonfarm development are the results of...

Despite modest economic growth over the past decade, the Philippines have made little progress in reducing poverty. In this regard, the Philippines is an outlier in the region, seemingly unable to translate economic growth into meaningful poverty reduction. This underscores the fact that...

We analyse the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. We base our analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. We extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty...

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste is a young, post-conflict nation endowed with significant oil revenues. Timor-Leste has one of the highest birth rates in the world (2.41 percent population growth) with over 44 percent of the population below 15 years of age (Timor-Leste Census, 2010)....

Social protection cash transfers are a vital policy instrument in tackling poverty, and provide an affordable, broad-based foundation for inclusive growth and social stability. Yet, international experience has shown that many countries have too many programs, but with coverage gaps and...

Social protection cash transfers are a vital policy instrument in tackling poverty, and provide an affordable, broad-based foundation for inclusive growth and social stability. Yet, international experience has shown that many countries have too many programs, but with coverage gaps and...

This paper estimates average and marginal returns to schooling in Indonesia using a non-parametric selection model. Identification of the model is given by exogenous geographic variation in access to upper secondary schools. We find that the return to upper secondary schooling varies widely...

This paper provides evidence of the effects of a large-scale intervention that focuses on the quality of nutritional and child care inputs during the early stages of life. The empirical strategy uses a combination of double-difference and weighting estimators in a longitudinal survey to address...