Cities in the modern world are beginning to share some features with the city-states of millennia past. Now, as then, cities are important, even critical, to economic development. Unlike the walled cities that harbored flourishing trade in medieval Europe, today, cities by the thousands all around the world are looking outward in search not of silk and spices, but rather sources of finance, global talent, and most of all, good ideas. But the search for knowledge isn't always easy.

Should polio be eradicated worldwide, countries must decide whether to continue to
vaccinate with the live-attenuated vaccine, to continue to vaccinate with the alternative,
killed vaccine, or to cease vaccinating. To reap a dividend from polio eradication,
countries must choose the last option, but vaccination cessation entails interdependent
risks as well as rewards. This article models the polio vaccination cessation game,
deriving the conditions that support vaccination cessation as an equilibrium, describing

Despite a diminishing role in industrial countries, the manufacturing sector continues to be an engine of economic growth in most developing countries. This article surveys the evidence on the determinants of industry location in developing countries. It also employs micro data for India and Indonesia to illustrate recent spatial dynamics of manufacturing relocation within urban agglomerations. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that agglomeration benefits, market access, and infrastructure endowments in large cities outweigh the costs of congestion, higher wages, and land prices.

Take-up of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India decreases with basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, increases with household wealth, and decreases with binding credit constraints. These results are consistent with the predictions of a simple neoclassical model with borrowing constraints. Other patterns are less consistent with the benchmark model.

The key features of the Malthusian model are that (i) income determines population growth, with rising wages increasing survival rates and (ii) there is a vital factor of production (land) which is fixed, implying decreased returns to scale for all other factors. The equilibrium state in such a model is a population living on subsistence incomes.

This paper provides microlevel evidence of how past institutions impact present economic outcomes. It looks at the impact of colonial land tenure institutions on local governance and education outcomes in northern India. Outcomes are worse in villages that belong to areas with a history of concentration of power with the elites. Such areas continue to retain a greater political presence of socially and economically dominant classes. Future research should examine the success of policies that attempt to break such persistence through empowerment of nonelite groups.

Large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income. This article examines the impact of rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of Hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey. Since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income, we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and inequality would have been in the absence of migration.

We conduct an empirical analysis of the geographic, economic, and social factors that contributed to the spread of civil war in Nepal over the period 1996-2006. This within-country analysis complements existing cross-country studies on the same subject. Using a detailed dataset to track civil war casualties across space and over time, several patterns are documented.

This paper examines the links between the assets and the economic activities of rural households in developing countries to provide insight into how the promotion of certain key assets-particularly education, land, and infrastructure-influences the economic choices of these households. Nationally representative data from 15 countries which form part of the rural income-generating activities (RIGA) database are used in the analysis.

Despite their economic importance, herders are generally neglected both by the governments of African countries and international donors. During the 1990s, nomadic livestock raising accounted for 75 percent of Mauritania's agricultural output, but received only 10 percent of the country's agricultural budget and donor support. In the past, there were few specific regulatory protections of nomadic economic activities. This article analyzes the content and impact of the Code Pastoral (enacted in 2000, effective in 2004) of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

Ghana has been one of the most rapidly growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa. This growth has been aided by Ghana's improving policy environment. In light of this, the paper addresses the question of why, given its higher level of per capita income and relatively strong growth, the housing conditions of the poor in Accra are considerably worse than those in a number of other African cities with lower incomes. There are not many data available to answer this question, so the method is indirect and takes two approaches.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the cross-country variation in the growth elasticity of poverty across a sample of developing countries during the period from 1990 to 2000. In order to identify variables that may explain the cross-country variation in the growth elasticity of poverty, the paper sets up a theoretical framework. Subsequently, the explanatory power of these variables is tested empirically by panel data econometric analysis.