Technical Note
Feasibility study: simulating the impacts of farm subsidies on poverty and inequality in African countries
Agricultural subsidies may have significant productive and distributional consequences, and policy-makers need to be able to assess these impacts as a part of the overall tax and benefit policy. Microsimulation models offer a tool for such analysis...
Working Paper
Entrepreneurial Ventures and the Developmental State
A basic intellectual challenge for those concerned with the poverty of nations is to come to grips with the nature and causes of the wealth of the world’s wealthier nations. One might then be in a position to inform the poorer nations how they might...
Working Paper
Imminent Prospects for Additional Finance
Some of the ways that have recently been discussed for increasing significantly the own resources of developing countries, or the amount or usefulness of the overseas aid that they receive, are potentially promising politically. This is because the...
Working Paper
National Food Policies Impacting on Food Security
India accounts for 16.7 per cent of the world’s food consumers. With the exception of China, India’s size in terms of food consumers is many times larger than the average size of the rest of the countries. At the time of independence in 1947, India...
Working Paper
Some Welfare Implications of 'Who Goes First?' in WTO Negotiations
We envisage a logical framework to explain why some trade negotiations are delayed because parties differ on who should ‘go first’. In our model, there are substantive welfare implications depending on which party sets tariff rates (or subsidies)...
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
International Trade, Food Security and the Response to the WTO in South Asian Countries
Agriculture contributes substantially to output and employment in South Asian countries. Therefore, any change, like trade liberalization, that impacts on the agriculture sector has widespread ramifications in terms of employment, nutrition...
Working Paper
Welfare Implications of Fiscal Reform
This paper investigates the effect of a food subsidy programme in India on child malnutrition by addressing the following linked questions using household survey data that includes information on usage of the public distribution system. First, does...
Working Paper
Access by the Poor in Latin America's Utility Reform
Any infrastructure reformers concerned with social issues in a developing country need to address two problems. The first is increasing access by the poor, and the second is ensuring consumption affordability, i.e. the ability of the poor to pay for...
Working Paper
The Reform of the Utilities Sector in Spain
This paper analyses the reforms that have taken place in the utilities sectors in Spain, with a focus on the political role in shaping the process of these reforms. We argue that the deregulation process was marked by the historical close...
Working Paper
Performance of Microfinance Institutions in Burkina Faso
This study tests the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Burkina Faso using indicators such as the sustainable interest rate and the subsidy dependence index. The results indicate that MFIs outreach performance remains very low...
Working Paper
Innovation Policy, Entrepreneurship, and Development
This article first reviews the economic rationales for innovation policy. It then describes the Finnish innovation policy and policy making environment. The Finnish policy is evaluated from the point of view of fostering entrepreneurship. R&D...
Working Paper
Analysis of the Potential Impact of the Current WTO Agricultural Negotiations on Government Strategies in the SADC Region
This study aims to help identify how the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could potentially constrain government action to achieve food security in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The paper considers the proposed tariff and subsidy...
Working Paper
Agricultural Support Measures of Advanced Countries and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries
Many developing nations, especially the least developed countries, are subjected to recurrent spells of food insecurity. In order to understand food insecurity in these countries it is necessary to consider not only immediate or trigger-causes of...
Working Paper
The Public Distribution Systems of Foodgrains and Implications for Food Security
A comparative study of the public distribution systems of foodgrains in India and China is expected to reveal lessons and experiences that are valuable to policymakers. This is particularly important for developing countries in their endeavour to...
Working Paper
Agricultural input subsidy and farmers outcomes in Tanzania
This paper examines the impact of the government input subsidy—the National Agriculture Input Voucher—on farmers’ production and welfare in Tanzania as well as the factors that influence agricultural production in the country. The analysis is based...