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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The study proceeded by broadly categorizing the various defects of the economy as manifestations of two disequilibria in the system. The first disequilibrium pertains to the internal imbalances as reflected mainly by the stagnation in economic growth...
Uzbekistan is typically seen as one of the slowest reformers among the countries in transition from central planning to a market-oriented economy. This paper evaluates the welfare impact of gradual transition in Uzbekistan, asking whether it has...
This paper suggests how the targeting efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using the ‘pro-poor policy’ (PPP) index developed by authors, the study investigates the pro-poorness of not only government programmes geared to the...
The global food price crisis of 2007/08 raised fears about the impacts of higher and more volatile food prices for the poor in Zambia. Like in the past, the implementation of the strategies to deal with the rising food prices, especially for the...
Set against a background of almost continuous economic decline since independence in 1957, the stabilization and adjustment programme pursued by Ghana since 1982-83 is a qualified but also a considerable success. Certainly it has achieved...
27 August 2014 Vladimir Popov Modern economic growth started in the West, not because of the efficiency of various capitalist institutions...
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson In an earlier article I reviewed a number of the high-profile contributions to the September 2014 conference on...
8 October 2014 by Roger Williamson Michael Keen from the International Monetary Fund addressed the UNU-WIDER Development Conference in September 2014...
30 October 2014 Dominik Etienne and Annett Victorero The last decade has witnessed a revival of concern over the impact of high-income concentration...
21 February 2014 Tony Addison Development researchers live in a world where research on development, not just in economics but also political science...
26 March 2014 Tony Addison The Nordic countries have a long-standing commitment to development, and their work in peace-building has taken Nordic...
25 June 2014 Malokele Nanivazo After a long series of conflicts and apparent macroeconomic mismanagement, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seems...
One persistent concern raised during discussions of whether aid effectively promotes the goals of donors is fungibility, that is; the possibility that aid is used in ways not intended by donors when disbursing the funds. It could be used to lower...
The ‘right’ choice of instruments and modalities to provide aid to developing countries in support of poverty reduction and economic development is arguably the most contested issue in the current international debate on aid effectiveness. A...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Social Policy and Development
Part of Book Poverty, Income Distribution and Well-Being in Asia during the Transition
Part of Book Poverty, Income Distribution and Well-Being in Asia during the Transition
Part of Journal Special Issue Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Journal Special Issue The CFA Franc Zone 10 Years After Devaluation
Karl Polanyi wrote The Great Transformation in 1944 which analysed the double movement Europe experienced, from a situation where the market was heavily regulated and controlled in the eighteenth century to a virtually unregulated market in the...
India addressed the requirement for pro-poor service delivery in rural regions by introducing decentralization and affirmative action policies. In order to measure the social preferences of local decision makers, we conducted field experiments which...
Part of Book The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
Community-based development has been criticized for its inadequate understanding of power relationships at the local level, which thus leaves room for elite capture. This paper compares and contrasts two case studies, both of which take power...
This paper overviews the debate on the relationship between the measures of globalization, economic growth and pace of urbanization, and speculates on its impact on the quality of life and poverty in the context of Asian countries. After experiencing...
The East Asian countries are currently experiencing declining fertility rates and aging of their populations. The demographic transition is beginning to affect various societal functions, and increasing international migrants are becoming one of the...
This paper considers how the conditionality inherent in HIPC debt relief should be constituted to promote pro-poor policies. There are two dimensions to this. First, the extent to which the policies proposed are pro-poor. Second, the potential for...
The paper will use the data from the PROGRESA evaluation to show the extent to which such a programme crowds out private transfers. An interesting aspect of the paper is the fact that it can use the randomization (one-third of the villages in the...
There has been a growing recognition among scholars that politics matters in the distribution of resources in society. However, attempts to use a political economy ‘lens’ with which to explore causes of poverty and strategies for poverty alleviation...
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