agricultural products to meet the world’s growing needs.

this report were more modest: to take stock of progress in the region, highlight the factors shaping East Asia's future, and suggest broad directions of policies.

This paper evaluates how the Progresa Program, which provides poor mothers in rural Mexico with education grants, has affected enrollment. Poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the Progresa are compared to those who reside in other (control) communities. Pre-program comparisons check the randomized design, and doubledifference estimators of the program's effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex. Probit models are also estimated for the probability a child is enrolled, controlling for additional characteristics of the child, their parents, local schools, and community, and for sample attrition, to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates. These estimates of program short-run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages.

A discussion of the theory of technology and economic growth suggests potentially negative implications for the impact of the Internet on developing countries. Technology in general is undoubtedly central to the growth process, but economists define technology in very broad terms. The impact of any particular, invented, technology is likely to be small. This theoretical perspective is supported by the empirical evidence regarding the limited impact of past `information revolutions' on least developed countries (LDCs) and the present impact of the Internet on advanced economies. Furthermore, LDCs appear ill-prepared to benefit from those opportunities that the Internet does present---they lack the physical and human capital, along with the institutions required to exploit the e-economy. Finally, even more optimistic forecasts of the Internet's global economic impact are small in scale compared to the challenge of development. This has some significant implications for development policy.

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which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background: The medical "brain drain " has been described as rich countries "looting " doctors and nurses from developing countries undermining their health systems and public health. However this "brain-drain " might also be seen as a success in the training and "export " of health professionals and the benefits this provides. This paper illustrates the arguments and possible policy options by focusing on the situation in one of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi. Discussion: Many see this "brain drain " of medical staff as wrong with developed countries exploiting poorer ones. The effects are considerable with Malawi facing high vacancy rates in its public health system, and with migration threatening to outstrip training despite efforts to improve pay and conditions. This shortage of staff has made it more challenging for Malawi to deliver on its Essential Health Package and to absorb new international health funding. Yet, without any policy effort Malawi has been able to demonstrate its global competitiveness in the training ("production") of skilled health professionals. Remittances from migration are a large and growing source of foreign exchange for poor countries and tend to go directly to households.

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This article argues that the international financial consequences of immigration exert a substantial influence on the choice of exchange rate regimes in the developing world. Over the past two decades, migrant remittances have emerged as a significant source of external finance for developing countries, often exceeding conventional sources of capital such as foreign direct investment and bank lending. Remittances are unlike nearly all other capital flows in that they are stable and move countercyclically relative to the recipient country’s economy. As a result, they mitigate the costs of forgone domestic monetary policy autonomy and also serve as an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries. The observable implication of these arguments is that remittances increase the likelihood that policymakers adopt fixed exchange rates. An analysis of data on de facto exchange rate regimes and a newly available dataset on remittances for up to 74 developing countries from 1982 to 2006 provides strong support for these arguments; the results are robust to instrumental variable analysis and the inclusion of multiple economic and political variables.

Support from the CIREM is gratefully acknowledged