In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices which, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The...

This paper investigates the determinants of non-compliance or violation of minimum wage legislation in South Africa, a country where violation is high, at just under 50 percent. The number of labour inspectors per capita is used as a proxy for enforcement, whilst non-compliance is measured using...

Food-for-work (FFW) programs are commonly used both for short-term relief and long-term development purposes. In this paper we assess the potential of FFW programs to reduce poverty and promote sustainable land use in the longer run. There is a danger that such programs distort labor allocation...

For decades, rapid urban expansion has led to concerns over the loss of cultivated land in rural China. Less well known is the fact that development of newly cultivated land has in fact consistently exceeded land conversion from 1999-2006. This paper provides an analytical model that makes sense...