The health reform plan put forth by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) focuses on expanding insurance coverage and provides new subsidies to individuals, small businesses, and businesses experiencing catastrophic expenses. It greatly increases the federal regulation of private insurance but does not address the core economic incentives that drive health care spending. This omission along with the very su...

At the same time, there is widespread political agreement on the need to better regulate to assure the quality of education and training. Indeed expressed concern over “shonky” operators and “ripoff” trainers including those that “milk” public grants, is strong indeed and has been a particular focus of recent political rhetoric. Quite unlike the rhetoric around “pink batts”, here the politician...

This paper demonstrates the success of women in microenterprise development to represent issues relevant to women's success in the sector. Researchers tend to use gender simply as a variable to explain success vis-avis relevant understanding of gender as a social construct. Such work disregards how culturally specific power relations influence women's opportunities for success. Gender and micro...

The paper reports micro-econometric evidence on the factors that influence the ability of the small businesses to create employment. It uses data on self-employment from a British panel survey. In particular it investigates the contributions of financial and entrepreneurial capital to job creation. Housing wealth appears to be significantly associated with small business job creation. It appear...

We investigate regional differences of the effect of new business formation on employment growth in West Germany. We find an inverse ‘u’-shaped relationship between the level of start-up activity and employment change. The main variables that shape the employment effects of new businesses in a region are population density, the share of medium level skilled workers, the proportion of Research a...

Who Are the Microenterprise Owners? Evidence from Sri Lanka on Tokman v. de Soto Is the vast army of the self-employed in low income countries a source of employment generation? We use data from surveys in Sri Lanka to compare the characteristics of own account workers (non-employers) with wage workers and with owners of larger firms. We use a rich set of measures of background, ability, and at...

This article reviews recent publications that add to the debate about gender and human settlements. Urban development is ultimately shaped by gender assumptions and by the way in which each sex experiences the urban environment; gender-blind urban planning can be overcome by reaching a greater understanding of women's economic and social roles (and the limitations imposed on them) in urban soc...

Capital does not simply flow unimpeded to those who can make the best use of it. Banks need assurance that loans will be repaid. For that reason, they do not lend to those who are too poor to put up collateral. Although the poor may have excellent investment opportunities, they are often excluded from financial markets and unable to invest. There is considerable empirical support for the existe...