The estimates of the extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty provided in the World Bank's World Development Reports for 1990 and 2000/01 are neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line unrelated to any clear conception of what poverty is. It employs a misleading and inaccurate measure of purchasing power “equivalence” that vitiates inte...

Research question/issue Since the global financial crisis triggered by collapse of Lehman Brothers, board gender diversity has attracted growing attention among academia and policy makers. The “Lehman Sisters” hypothesis argues for more female representation on bank director boards based stereotyped gap in risk preference, which been widely supported empirical studies nonfinancial firms. Howeve...

Synthesis S1 S1.1 Context S1 S1.2 Mass Rapid Transit S2 S1.3 MRT Impacts on Policy Objectives S7 S1.4 Issues in Project Development S11 S1.5 Applicability of the MRT Options S22 S1.6 Research Requirements S26 Synthesis 1 S1.1 Context 1 S1.2 Mass Rapid Transit 2 S1.3 MRT Impacts on Policy Objectives 7 S1.4 Issues in Project Development 11 S1.5 Applicability of the MRT Options 22 S1.6 Research Re...

Over the last two decades, bank lending has been closely correlated with property prices in both industrialised and developing countries. From previous empirical studies it is not clear whether these cycles were driven by property prices or lending. In this study I analyse the direction of causality between bank lending and property prices in 16 industrialised countries over the last two decade...

We develop a standard model to show how transaction costs in international investment affect conventional tests of consumption risk sharing, both in a multilateral and a bilateral setting. We implement the tests in a novel international dataset on bilateral holdings of equity, bonds, foreign direct investment and bank loans. International consumption risk sharing increases with foreign capital ...