Jean-Pierre Cling

New international poverty reduction strategies

Jean-Pierre Cling, Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud Introduction: Have the Changes actually Changed Anything? Part I: Diagnosis and Reflections on Poverty Reduction Policies 1. Jean-Pierre Cling A Critical Review of the World Banks Stance on Poverty Reduction 2. Denis Cogneau Poverty, Inequality of Conditions and Inequality of Opportunities: Chances and Risks of New Strategies 3. Serge Paugam The Lessons to be Learnt from Methods of Regulating Poverty in Europe 4. Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud Urban Poverty and Recession in Sub-Saharan Africa: Elements for an Assessment 5. Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud Do They Really Think Differently? The Voice of the Poor Through Quantitative Surveys Part II: Scope and Limitations of the New International Initiatives 6. Jean-Pierre Cling, Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud The Participatory Process Towards Establishing New Relationship Between Stakeholders 7. Jean-Pierre Cling, Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Old Wine in New Bottles? 8. Idrissa Dante, Mohamed Ali Marouani and Marc Raffinot Poverty Reduction in Mali: Will the PRSP Make a Difference? 9. Jean-David Naudet Debt Relief or Aid Reform? 10. Anne-Sophie Bougouin and Marc Raffinot The HIPC Initiative and Poverty Reduction Part III: Monitoring and Evaluation Systems 11. Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud The Existing Systems for Monitoring Poverty: Weaknesses of the Usual Household Surveys 12. Daniel Verger The Different Approaches to Measuring Poverty in Europe: What Lessons for the LDCs? 13. Mireille Razafindrakoto and Francois Roubaud Two Original Poverty Monitoring Tools: The 1-2-3 Surveys and the Rural Observatories 14. Denis Cogneau, Michael Grimm and Anne-Sophie Robilliard Evaluating Poverty Reduction Policies: The Contribution of Micro-Simulation Techniques

Development, a Question of Opportunity? A Critique of the 2006 World Development Report: Equity and Development

The World Banks World Development Report 2006 addresses equity and development, defining equity as respect for equal opportunities combined with the avoidance of absolute deprivation. Equity has up to now remained a marginal issue in development economics. This detailed analysis endeavours to place the subject within the context of the evolution of World Bank thinking and policies. The wealth of the concept is illustrated, the downside being the difficulty in defining it accurately. We also emphasise the gap between the prospects opened up by such an enlargement of development goals and the reports policy recommendations, which are generally merely an extension of the World Banks traditional analyses.

The informal economy in Asia: introduction to the issue

Most jobs in the developing countries are found in the informal economy, which plays a predominant role in developing economies. Word even has it that the global economic crisis has increased the weight of the informal sector due to job losses in other economic sectors. Therefore, if we want to improve our understanding of how these countries’ economies work, we need to improve our knowledge of the informal economy. Such knowledge is also a key to poverty reduction, a core development policy concern. This is a major challenge from the political, economic and social point of view. Let us not forget that the 2011 Arab Spring started in Tunisia when an informal fruit and vegetable street vendor was harassed by the police and set fire to himself. At the same time, the informal economy remains largely a mystery to researchers and ignored, if not perceived negatively by politicians, as shown by this tragic figurehead of the Tunisian Revolution. Despite decades of work on the subject by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the mists that continue to surround the informal economy remain a major obstacle to its inclusion in economic policies. In keeping with international recommendations, the informal sector is defined as all non-agricultural, unregistered, unincorporated enterprises that produce goods and services for sale.1 Informal employment is defined as employment with no social security coverage. A number of characteristics can be considered in this regard for a precise definition: social security coverage, written contract, pay slips, redundancy pay, etc. These definitions find informal employment being made up of two main and distinct components, that is, employment in the informal sector and unprotected employment in the formal sector. In keeping with ILO (1993, 2003) definitions, the informal sector and informal employment make up what is known as the informal economy. The lack of accurate statistical data on the informal economy is another concern. This problem is due to a number of factors: hazy definitions outside of the statistical community, lack of interest by the authorities in a sector operating on the fringes of the economy and not paying any or much tax, measurement problems due precisely to the fact that this is a fringe sector, and the preconceived idea that the informal sector is a mark of underdevelopment and will gradually disappear as the countries develop. Whatever the case, the lack of data reliability limits the relevance of the analyses presented in the international reports on this subject (see, in particular, the 2009 ILO-WTO and OECD reports: Bacchetta et al. 2009; Jütting and de Laiglesia 2009). In addition, the absence of sufficient data generally forces economic studies on the subject to adopt ad hoc (e.g., smalland medium-sized enterprises) and highly approximate definitions (Guha-Khasnobis and Kanbur 2006).