Despite historically high rates of economic growth in South Asia over the last two decades, the extent of informality remains large and widespread. This paper asks why that is, why informality needs to be addressed, and how it can be addressed. The central thrust of this paper is to emphasize...

The standard theory of anti-poverty targeting assumes individual incomes cannot be observed, but statistical properties of income distribution in broadly defined groups are known. Targeting rules are then derived for the forms of transfers conditioned on group membership of individuals. In this...

This paper adopts the “Rip Van Winkle” stratagem, of asking what differences would be noticed, in the domain of poverty and distribution, by someone who fell asleep in 1987 (the year I published my paper on poverty in the IMF Staff Papers, and woke up only in 2007 (the year I visited the IMF...

We analyze conflicts between communities. A community-specific public good, to which members make voluntary contributions, defines communities. Some, but not all, members of one community may contribute towards another community’s public good. Such ‘bridging’ contributions will not occur...

We investigate how vertical unity within a community interacts with horizontal class divisions of an unequal income distribution. Community is conceptualized in terms of a public good to which all those in the community have equal access, but from which outsiders are excluded. We formulate the...

In the presence of local public goods differences in tastes are an important determinant of the way in which partnerships are formed. Heterogeneity in tastes for private vs. public goods produces a tendency to positive assortment and partnerships of couples with similar tastes; heterogeneity in...

We investigate how voluntary contributions to community-specific public goods affect (a) the relationship between inequality of incomes and inequality of welfare outcomes, and (b) individuals’ material incentives for supporting income redistribution. We show that the nominal distribution of...