A new assessment is made of the developing world’s progress against poverty. By the frugal $1 a day standard there were 1.1 billion poor people in 2001—almost 400 million fewer than 20 years earlier. During that period the number of poor people declined by more than 400 million in China,...

Two trade-offs have been widely seen to severely constrain the scope for attacking poverty using redistributive transfers in poor countries: an equity-efficiency trade off and an insurance-efficiency trade off. This article argues that recent economic theories and evidence call into question the...

The Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) rates from the 2011 round of the International Comparison Program (ICP) imply some dramatic revisions to price levels and real incomes across the world. The paper tries to understand these changes. Domestic inflation rates account for a share of the PPP changes,...

The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...

Ravallion tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm-household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...