sector employment, uncovered sector employment, and unemployment. The impact of these labor market adjustments on absolute poverty will depend on how the pattern of employment composition changes within households and on how income is shared within households. An earlier paper (Fields and...

This paper introduces a significant new multi-disciplinary collection of studies of poverty dynamics, presenting the reader with the latest thinking by a group of researchers who are leaders in their respective disciplines. It argues that there are three main fronts on which progress must be...

In the last two decades, across a range of countries high growth rates have reduced poverty but have been accompanied by rising inequality. This paper is motivated by this stylized fact, and by the strong distributional concerns that persist among populations and policy makers alike, despite the...

China’s spectacular growth and poverty reduction has been accompanied by growing inequality which threatens the social compact and thus the political basis for economic growth and social development. The regional dimension of inequality— rural/urban, inland/coastal and provincial—dominates...

The informality discourse is large, vibrant and expanding fast. But there is a certain conceptual incoherence to the literature. New definitions of informality compete with old definitions leading to a plethora of alternative conceptualisations. While some individual studies may apply a tight...

This paper establishes some general principles of the rationale for development assistance in Middle Income Countries and then applies these principles to the operations of the World Bank. It then puts the argument through its paces for the specific case of India, which has just transitioned...

This compendium of entries on the economics of Africa provides thematic and country perspectives by more than 100 leading economic analysts of Africa. The contributors include: the best of young African researchers based in Africa; renowned academics from the top universities in Africa, Europe and...