Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (43)
Working Paper
pdf
– Contextual Differences in the Returns to Bolsa Familia in Brazil
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. Building on Amartya Sen’s work, I assess the...
Working Paper
pdf
Malaria still claims a heavy human and economic toll, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the causality between malaria and poverty is presumably bi-directional, malaria plays a role in the economic difficulties of the region. This article provides an analysis of the economic...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper proposes a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal multidimensional categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the second by correlation-increasing switches and/or...
Working Paper
pdf
– a Retrospective Approach for Research Enquiry
This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. Our results indicate that aggregate shocks have...
Working Paper
pdf
– a Subjective Well-Being Approach
A subjective well-being approach is followed to assess the magnitude of inefficiency in the use of income. The information comes from a Mexican survey and an X-inefficiency technique is used. The paper shows that there exists substantial inefficiency in the use of income at all income levels, even...
Working Paper
pdf
– Some Evidence on Intergenerational Occupational Mobility from India
Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2005, we examine intergenerational occupational mobility in India, an issue on which very few systematic and rigorous studies exist. We group individuals into classes and document patterns of mobility at the rural, urban and all-India levels...
Working Paper
pdf
Using panel datasets from Mexico and Chile for the 2000s, we examine the determinants of middle-class intra-generational mobility. We define the middle class by means of a latent index of economic wellbeing that is less sensitive to short-term fluctuation and measurement error than standard measures...
Working Paper
pdf
– Can Microcredit Close the Deal?
This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of family microenterprises operate. It highlights a number of issues that impinge on...
Working Paper
pdf
A natural way of viewing an inequality or a poverty measure is in terms of the vector distance between an actual (empirical) distribution of incomes and some appropriately normative distribution (reflecting a perfectly equal distribution of incomes, or a distribution with the smallest mean that is...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper reviews the evidence on the ‘inclusiveness’ of the growth in consumption expenditure that has occurred in India over the last four decades or so. The notion of dynamic inclusiveness is framed in terms of imagined normative allocations of the inter-temporal product of growth, as dictated...
Working Paper
pdf
The present paper is a selective overview, very considerably based on work in which the author himself has been involved, of the difficulties which can arise in the measurement of poverty and inequality when one compares populations of differing size. The paper begins with certain problems attending...
Working Paper
pdf
Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African governments are often provided conflicting...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Mozambique
Measuring poverty remains a complex and contentious issue. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty rates are higher, information bases typically weaker, and the underlying determinants of welfare relatively volatile. This paper employs recently collected data on household...
Working Paper
pdf
– Recent Global Evidence
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 countries as a group has been relatively strong...
Working Paper
pdf
– Easy Come, Easy Go?
Contrary to the popular notion that money that is easily earned, is also easily spent, economic theory holds that income is fungible. Drawing on the concept of mental accounting, this study theoretically explores when such a link between spending behaviour and the effort dispensed in obtaining...
Working Paper
pdf
– Comparative Path Analysis for Mozambique and Vietnam
While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth-poverty accounting and countries’ different compositions of economic growth. We...
Displaying 16 of 43 results