As an alternative to traditional subsidy schemes in utility sectors, direct subsidy programs have several advantages: they are transparent, they are explicit, and they minimize distortions of the behavior of both the utility, and the customers. At the same time, defining practical eligibility...

Argentina was a pioneer of infrastructure reform in the early 1990s. The social dimension of infrastructure services was typically overlooked in the reform process. However, social sensitivities often resurfaced in the years that followed, leading to a series of ad hoc social policy measures...

This report consists of a collection of case studies from Latin America combining qualitative and quantitative research methods for the analysis of poverty within a social exclusion framework. The first chapter provides an overview of the differences between quantitative and qualitative methods,...

Instead of targeting poor areas, should poverty programs target households with personal attributes that foster poverty, no matter where they live? Possibly not. There may be hidden constraints on mobility, or location may reveal otherwise hidden householdattributes. Using survey data for...

The authors assess whether the placement of bank branches in Bangladesh responds to unexploited potential for nonfarm rural development. They compare the branch location choicesof a large new private nonprofit bank, the famous Grameen Bank, with those of more traditional government banks. They...

An assessment of the welfare gains from a targeted social program can be seriously biased unless it takes proper account of the endogeneity of program participation. Bias comes from two sources of placement endogeneity: the purposive targeting of the geographic areas to receive the program, and...

This book helps us to understand development economics in light of the past half-century's experience of development thought and practice. This volume is an outgrowth of an intergenerational symposium on "the Future of Development Economics," held in Dubrovnik in May 1999. It collects the papers...

This paper analyses patterns of economic and social interactions that sustain the poor or, alternatively, isolate them yet further from other households, from the communities in which they live and, by extension, from social networks and economic opportunities. The study also assesses...

This guide has three objectives: First and foremost, it seeks to provide newcomers to the Administrative and political scene in Afghanistan with a basic guide to the structures and processes of government. Second and related, it intends to provide reformers with some understanding of how to work...

The Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics seeks to expand the flow of ideas among development policy researchers, academics, and practitioners from around the world. It is a premier forum for World Bank and other experts to exchange ideas, challenge one another's findings, and...