This commentary poses a series of progressively harder questions in the economic analysis of growth, inequality and poverty. Starting with relatively straightforward analysis of the relationship between growth and inequality, the first level of hard questions come when we ask what policies and...

This collection of essays honors a remarkable man and his work. Erik Thorbecke has made significant contributions to the microeconomic and the macroeconomic analysis of poverty, inequality and development, ranging from theory to empirics and policy. The essays in this volume display the same...

The dominant perspective in discussions of labor and environmental standards and globalization is that of North-South competition and its impact on Northern standards. This paper presents an alternative perspective, that of South-South competition to export to the North, and its impact on...

This paper considers the evolution ofthinking about poverty since Rowntree's classic study ofpoverty in England at the turn ofthe last century. It highlights the progressive broadening ofthe definition and measurement ofpoverty, from command over market-purchased goods (income) to other...

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...