This paper investigates the reasons why inequality, and distribution more generally, have come to the fore in the development discourse at the tum of the century, after a period of relative neglect in the 1980s. The paper considers, in particular the analysis of (a) efficiency and equity, (b)...

This paper develops a framework for thinking about the policy challenge of scaling up small scale interventions, governmental and non-governmental, that address poverty reduction successfully. The framework sees scaling up as addressing different components of market failure, government failure...

In January, 2005, a group of analysts and activists met in Gujarat at the invitation of SEWA to discuss papers presented at a conference on Membership Based Organizations of the Poor. The details of the conference are available at http://wiego.org/ahmedabad/. Somewhat unusually for academic...

While trade liberalization was perhaps the archetype disagreement on development strategy in the 1980s and 1990s, in the 1990s and 2000s this role has been taken over by water privatization and the passions it arouses. What are the underlying reasons for disagreements on water, among those who...

The last thirty years in the analysis of inequality and poverty, especially in developing countries, has seen two phases-a phase of conceptual advancement, followed by a phase of application and policy debate. Both phases were exciting and useful in their own way, but the applied phase has...

This paper presents an overview of the economics of international aid, highlighting the historical literature and the contemporary debates. It reviews the “trade-theoretic” and the “contract-theoretic” analytical literature, and the empirical and institutional literature. It demonstrates...

The global International Financial Institutions (IFI’s) increasingly justify their operations in terms of the provision of International Public Goods (IPG’s). This is partly because there appears to be support among the rich countries of the North for expenditures on these IPG’s, in...