Working Paper
China Urban Poverty and its Contributing Factors, 1986-2000
Food price increases and the introduction of radical social welfare and enterprise reforms during the 1990s generated significant changes in the lives of urban households in China. During this period urban poverty increased considerably. This paper...
Working Paper
Impact of the Global Commodity and Financial Crises on Poverty in Vietnam
Economic growth in Vietnam has been fairly resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. In addition, the impact of the crises on employment and poverty is in dispute. We develop a dynamic computable general...
Working Paper
Between Past and Future of Latin America
This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty...
Working Paper
Growth, Inequality, and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries
The study presents recent global evidence on the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the role of income inequality. The focus is on the period since the early/mid-1990s when growth in these...
Working Paper
Poverty and Growth in the WAEMU after the 1994 Devaluation
This paper brings out that poverty increased massively in the wake of the 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc, despite a significant recovery of economic growth. Although this increase affected all the social groups, it fell mostly on the urban poor...
Working Paper
Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy with an Egalitarian Constraint
Bourguignon and Fields (‘Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy’) and Gangopadhyay and Subramanian (‘Optimal Budgetary Intervention in Poverty Alleviation Schemes’) have derived optimal budgetary rules for the redress of poverty through direct...
Working Paper
Some Simple Analytics of Poverty Redress through Direct Income Transfers and Wage Employment Programmes
This paper is a review and commentary, from both ethical and informational perspectives, of some known results in optimal anti-poverty budgetary rules for two kinds of intervention, direct income transfers and wage employment programmes.
Working Paper
Hunger and Entitlements
Hunger is not a recent phenomenon. Nor is famine. Life has beenshort and hard in much of the world, most of the time. Bothchronic undernourishment and recurrent famines have been amongthe causal antecedents of the brutishness and brevity of human...
Working Paper
Social Transfers and Growth
The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the...
Journal Article
The Impact of the Global Commodity and Financial Crises on Poverty in Vietnam
Economic growth in Vietnam was resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. Impacts on employment and poverty are also disputed. We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to decompose growth and...
Working Paper
Can the Context Mediate Macro-Policy Outcomes?
Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers...
Working Paper
Prospects for 'Pro-Poor' Growth in Africa
This paper examines trends in income distribution and its linkages to economic growth and poverty reduction in order to understand the prospects for achieving poverty reduction in Africa. We examine the levels and trends in income distribution in...
Working Paper
Underdevelopment, Transition and Reconstruction in Sub-Saharan Africa
Reconstructing Africa's war damaged economies is an urgent task. This is especially so in a group of countries - Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique - which must also complete their economic and political transition from state...
Working Paper
Market Responses to Anti-Hunger Policies
The way markets respond to anti-hunger policies can have considerable bearing on their effectiveness. This paper investigates market responses to various policies, including direct transfer payments, relief work, food pricing policies, public grain...
Working Paper
Welfare Changes in China during the Economic Reforms
The study examines welfare changes in China during the reform period (1978- ) by analysing various welfare indicators, the causes of change, and the shifting models. It provides an empirical case to the general debate over the relationship between...
Working Paper
Undernutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa
The predominant perception is that the world's food problems are now concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. Declining food production and recurrent famine in many African countries are the focal points of much recent work on food problems. This paper...