This paper develops a framework and some
hypotheses regarding the impact of local-level, informal
legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate
growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a
set of stylized differences between formal and informal
legal justice systems, identifies the pathways through which
formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what
the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of

This paper develops a framework and some
hypotheses regarding the impact of local-level, informal
legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate
growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a
set of stylized differences between formal and informal
legal justice systems, identifies the pathways through which
formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what
the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of

The relationship between wealth and
child labor has been widely examined. This paper uses three
rounds of time-series, cross-sectional data to examine the
relationship between wealth and child labor and schooling.
The paper finds that wealth is crucial in determining a
child's activities, but that this factor is far from
being a sufficient condition to enroll a child in school.
This is particularly the case for rural girls. Nonparametric

The objective of this study, requested
by the Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development,
is to assist the government of Egypt in: formulating a
coherent national affordable housing strategy which puts in
place an effective institutional and regulatory framework
that creates the necessary conditions for an efficiently
functioning housing market, devises the incentive structure
needed to promote increased private sector participation in

This paper assesses the impact of
work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior
of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal
household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental
Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to
account for unobserved factors that could simultaneously
affect males' decision to migrate and females'
decision to participate in the labor market. The results

Yemen is the second poorest country in
the Middle East and North Africa region, with 42 percent of
its population counted as poor in 1998. GDP has stagnated at
around US$530 per capita in real terms since 2002.
Unemployment, estimated at 11.5 percent in 1999, is expected
to have worsened as the population has climbed at 3 percent
a year and the labor force has burgeoned. Extreme gender
inequalities persist. Malnutrition is so severe that Yemeni

This paper investigates how reductions
of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle
school graduates to attend high school in rural China.
Change in the cost of migration is identified using
exogenous variation across counties in the timing of
national identity card distribution, which made it easier
for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in
urban destinations. The analysis first shows that timing of

This assessment, reflecting
poverty's many dimensions in Mozambique, combines
multiple disciplines and diagnostic tools to explore
poverty. It combines quantitative and qualitative approaches
to understand trends in poverty and the dynamics that shape
them. The objective is to support the development and
implementation of proper policies that really work by taking
poverty's multiple dimensions into account. The first

Funding for the reproductive health
agenda agreed at the 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development has fallen short of estimated
requirements. In the changed funding environment, stronger
evidence on the links between reproductive health and
poverty reduction is needed. This paper reviews the evidence
base on three reproductive health outcomes: early
childbearing, maternal survival, and unintended pregnancy.

After more than 35 years, the elected
local government system in Lesotho was reestablished in 2005
through the election of the Local Authorities, i.e. the
Community and District Councils (CCs and DCs). Across the
political spectrum, the political will to move forward was
at its peak. An exemplary campaign to educate the entire
population as to the purposes and functioning of the new
Local Authorities, and the electoral process preceded the

This publication offers crucial lessons
for policy makers and development experts who may be
considering using small area poverty maps as tools of
economic development and helps add to our array of tools for
dealing with the political economy issues of poverty. It
represents a major contribution to a little understood
aspect of the well-known adage "location, location,
location," demonstrating that the conceptualization of

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
are a challenge the global community has set for itself.
They are a challenge to poor countries to demonstrate good
governance and a commitment to poverty reduction. And they
are a challenge to wealthy countries to make good on their
promise to support economic and social development. The MDGs
have captured the world's attention, in part because
they can be measured, as this little book demonstrates. More