This paper compares how results using
various methods to construct asset indices match results
using per capita expenditures. The analysis shows that
inferences about inequalities in education, health care use,
fertility, child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes
are quite robust to the specific economic status measure
used. The measures-most significantly per capita
expenditures versus the class of asset indices-do not,

In a wide variety of settings, spiteful
preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation,
trade, and thus economic development. This paper shows that
spiteful preferences - the desire to reduce another's
material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing
one's relative payoff - are surprisingly widespread in
experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions
in India (Uttar Pradesh). In a one-shot trust game, the

This report was prepared in close
collaboration with the Bank of Albania. This report focused
on trade, services, and agriculture; however, the limited
scope of their operations still leaves a potentially large
unmet demand for credit in agriculture. This report focuses
on problems related to the operation of Immovable Property
Registry System (IPRS) and other institutions and the
formalization of property rights and inscription of

The case studies in this book were
developed as part of a year-long learning process initiated
by the World Bank in 2003-4 to examine large scale poverty
reduction programs in a wide range of developing countries
around the world. This volume presents 12 of the case
studies from South Asia. . The last two decades saw
substantial change in the countries of South Asia. All
countries of the subcontinent experienced more rapid growth

Using individual level employment data
from Bangladesh, this paper presents empirical evidence on
the relative importance of farm and urban linkages for rural
nonfarm employment. The econometric results indicate that
high return wage work and self-employment in nonfarm
activities cluster around major urban centers. The negative
effects of isolation on high return wage work and on
self-employment are magnified in locations with higher

There is compelling evidence of the
importance of gender equality for poverty reduction and
sustainable growth. So it should come as no surprise that
most development actors-international agencies, bilateral
donors, and most developing countries, have an official
policy for promoting gender equality. Millennium Development
Goal 3 (MDG3) on gender equality and women's
empowerment is shared global commitment. With only seven

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

This paper addresses labor markets in
Haiti, including farm and nonfarm employment and income
generation. The analyses are based on the first Living
Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole
country and representative at the regional level. The
findings suggest that four key determinants of employment
and productivity in nonfarm activities are education,
gender, location, and migration status. This is emphasized

The policy reforms called for in the
transition from a socialist command economy to a developing
market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a
country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial
focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which
is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all
the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving
many rural households out of farming into more remunerative

Property assessment for rating purposes has been practiced in Kenya for over a century. Property taxation is a major source of local authority finance though its full potential has not being realized. The revenue received from property taxes is used for provision of services to residents within a local authority’s jurisdiction Lack of realization of full potential of the property tax is blamed on inefficiencies in the local authorities as a result of poor property tax administration.

Energy poverty is a global problem: access to energy services is crucial to meet basic household needs, deliver and access public services, and generate income. Less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan (SSA) rural households have access to electricity, with an overall access rate below 25 percent. One of the main obstacles for SSA electrification practitioners is the difficulty in obtaining practical and timely knowledge on how to overcome economic, technical, institutional, and political barriers to electrification in their day-to-day work.

Albania's radical farmland
distribution is credited with averting an economic crisis
and social unrest during the transition. But many believe it
led to a holding structure too fragmented to be efficient,
and that public efforts to consolidate plots are needed to
lay the foundation for greater rural productivity. This
paper uses farm-level data from the 2005 Albania Living
Standards Measurement Survey to explore this quantitatively.