The World Bank's new environment strategy advocates cost-effective reduction of air and water pollutants that are most harmful to human health. In addition, it addresses threats to the livelihood of over one billion people who live on fragile lands-lands that are steeply sloped, arid, or covered...

We use a competing risk model to analyze environmental determinants of child mortality using the 1992 China National Health Survey, which collects information on cause of death. Our primary question is whether taking into account of cause of death using a competing risk model, compared with a...

Empirical studies on health at a disaggregate level-by socioeconomic group or geographic location-can provide useful information for designing poverty-focused interventions. Using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, the author investigates the determinants of health outcomes in low-income...

Using household data specifically collected for the purpose of evaluation, the authors empirically evaluate the impact on household income of a rural program in China that focuses on increasing women's economic and social participation in the local community. They find that the program...

There have been extensive theoretical studies of firms'responses to environmental regulations ad enforcement but few empirical analyses of firms'expenditures on pollution abatement in response to different regulations and enforcement strategies. The authors empirically analyze the pollution...

Public provision of education has often been perceived as universal and egalitarian, but in reality it is not. Political pressure typically results in incidence bias in favor of the rich. The author argues that the bias in political influence resulting from extreme income inequalities is...

Growth is pro-poor if the poverty measure of interest falls. According to this definition there are three potential sources of pro-poor growth: (1) a high rate of growth of average incomes; (2) a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes; and (3) a poverty-reducing pattern of...

In recent years -as a result of economic contraction, declining employment and real wages, and changes in labor market behavior- Ukraine's tax base of the social security system has declined, threatening its sustainability. About 40 percent of the labor force works in the informal sector, paying...

Labor market integration is typically assumed to improve welfare in the absence of distortions, because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. The author examines this result in a simple general equilibrium model in the presence of a common property resource: social capital....

The authors analyze the effects of building height restrictions, providing a concrete welfare cost estimate for the city of Bangalore, India. Relying on several theoretical results, their analysis shows that the welfare cost imposed on its residents by Bangalore's building height restriction...