Little is known about the extent to which public spending is targeted towards the poor in Mozambique. The objective of the present paper is to assess whether public expenditures on education and health, in particular, are successful at reaching the poorer segments of the Mozambican population....

This paper identifies the key causal factors behind farmers’ marketing decisions in Mozambique. A two-step decision making process is modelled. Farmers decide, first, whether or not to participate in the market and, second, how much to market. The model is estimated using a Heckman switching...

How much does economic growth contribute to poverty reduction? I discuss analytical and empirical approches to assess the poverty elasticity of growth, and emphasize that the relationship between growth and poverty change is non-constant. For a given poverty measure, it depends on initial...

The food, fuel, and financial crises that started in 2008 reverberated throughout the global economy, causing job losses; poverty; and economic, financial, and political upheaval in countries all over the world. This book is not about the causes of these crises or the macroeconomic and financial...

Negative attitudes toward groups in society are widespread and underpin systematic processes of social exclusion that marginalize people and deny them opportunities and dignity. This paper looks at the processes underlying social exclusion. It uses data covering Eastern Europe and Central Asia...