changes over time in multidimensional poverty methodology and results for 34 countries summary this paper sets out a systemic account of intertemporal changes in multidimensional poverty using the alkire foster adjusted headcount ratio and its consistent sub indices it uses three techniques to assess the pro poorness of multidimensional poverty reduction the analysis of changes in multidimensional poverty draws on the global multidimensional poverty index mpi and related destitution measure in 34 countries and 338 sub national regions covering 2 5 billion people for which there is a recent mpi estimation and comparable demographic and health survey dhs dataset across time first it assesses overall changes in poverty and its incidence and intensity and compares this with changes in 1 90 poverty next utilizing the property of subgroup decomposability it examines changes in the mpi and its consistent sub indices over time across urban rural regions sub national regions and ethnic groups the decomposition analysis identifies relevant national patterns including those in which the pace of poverty reduction is higher for the poorest subgroups finally the paper analyzes the dynamics of a strict subset of the poor who are identified as destitute using a more extreme deprivation cutoff vector and studies relative rates of reduction of destitution and poverty by country and region this extensive empirical analysis illustrates how to assess the extent and patterns of reduction of multidimensional poverty as well as whether it is inclusive or whether some people or groups are left behind naturally some further research questions emerge

reversing urban bias in african rice markets evidence from senegal summary urban bias constitutes an important institutional impediment to economic development in poor countries some african governments now recognize that they should invest in agricultural productivity in order to reverse urban bias but often forget the equally important objective of investing in quality tailored to consumers so as to reverse urban bias footprint on food markets we conduct framed field experiments in two major urban markets in senegal and find that the majority of urban consumers are willing to pay quality premiums for local rice suggesting that investment in post harvest rice quality is a priority in the reversal of urban bias 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

productivity gains from rice genetic enhancements in west africa countries and ecologies abstract many critics claim that public research in west africa has failed to develop technological innovations to improve productivity and stimulate economic development in the agricultural sector using griliches method of estimating the impact of a research induced supply shift this study finds that rice varietal improvement generated a producer surplus gain of approximately us 360 million in 1998 in the seven most important rice producing countries of west africa eighty one percent of this gain has occurred in the irrigated and rainfed lowland ecologies which occupy just 12 and 35 of total regional rice area respectively by contrast approximately us 5 6 million is invested annually in regional varietal improvement research

cereals demand in the sahel and potential impacts of regional cereals protection abstract recent policy debate in the sahel has focused on a regional protection zone for cereals this paper discusses crosscountry evidence of consumption patterns and the sensitivity of these to policy variables and considers potential income distribution and efficiency impacts of a rice tariff increase a tariff would hurt the poor in the short term because the poor depend to a large extent on rice as a fast food purchased from street vendors the trend toward rice consumption is a long term structural phenomenon linked to urbanization rather than to short term price changes maize and millet sorghum are substitutes in consumption which should serve to encourage development of maize in the guinean zone to help assure sahel food security in drought years

comparative advantage in demand and the development of rice value chains in west africa summary national rice development strategies in africa are often supply focused and implicitly assume that consumers will readily substitute imported for domestic rice however due to increasing import dependency urban consumer preferences for rice have become biased toward asian export quality standards against which african rice has difficulties to compete anecdotal evidence suggests that this import bias is higher in cities close to the port and remote from the geographical centers of cultural heritage where african rice was domesticated more than 3 000 years ago we purposely select a sample of five west african urban markets which are supplied by both foreign and domestic rice value chains and which are located at varying distances from the nearest ports and centers of cultural heritage and conduct framed field experiments based on auctions to analyze the drivers of urban demand for domestic rice with upgraded quality characteristics we find that west african rice has increasing difficulties competing against imported rice on urban markets the more consumers appreciate characteristics of imported asian rice the closer to the port and the further the geographical and genealogical distance from rice cultural heritage these challenges provide crucial insights into value chain upgrading in policy makers struggle to achieve rice self sufficiency in west africa our findings suggest that the optimal portfolio of investment in value chain upgrading is a function of the targeted end market and its distance from the port and rice cultural heritage the closer the end market is located toward the port the more investment is needed in lifting demand of domestic rice through quality upgrading branding and promotion to enable it to compete against imported rice proximity to centers of cultural heritage on the other hand endows rice value chains with a comparative advantage in demand requiring less investment in demand lifting and leaving more room for supply shifting investments

the renminbi and poor country growth discussions on how best to exit from global imbalances to create a more balanced world economy have ignored the impact on poor countries of proposals to redress these imbalances this paper aims at filling that gap it gauges the degree of renminbi rmb undervaluation presents evidence on rmb undervaluation and china s gdp growth rate surveys the role of the real effective exchange rate both its level and its stability over time for underpinning growth in developing countries especially in large dual economies such as china and india finally the paper presents new evidence on growth linkages between china and poor countries for the last two decades and surveys literature on potential displacement effects of rmb appreciation the analysis allows broad conclusions to be drawn about the potential developing country beneficiaries and losers from various renminbi adjustment scenarios in the forthcoming years

using an economic experiment to estimate willingness to pay for a new maternal nutrient supplement in ghana scaling up access to supplements designed to prevent undernutrition such as new small quantity lipid based nutrient supplements sq lns may require distribution via both public channels and retail markets the viability of sq lns retail markets will hinge on household level demand we use an economic experiment to characterize initial willingness to pay wtp for a maternal sq lns product in ghana wtp is positive for most participants though below the estimated cost of production for many wtp varies depending on income assets and parity status these findings have implications for the design of public health policy and hybrid public private delivery mechanisms

intrahousehold allocation of free and purchased mosquito nets for some health goods intrahousehold allocation may be more important in determining outcomes than household level consumption an example is the use of mosquito nets to prevent malaria malaria kills over one million people annually 90 percent of them children under the age of five the use of insecticide treated mosquito nets itns is considered the most costeffective available strategy for control of the disease in 2000 44 of the 50 malaria affected countries in africa committed themselves to increasing the use of itns by vulnerable populations in particular children under five years of age and pregnant women adults in malarious regions have typically acquired some immunity to the disease through repeated exposure over the course of their lives the risk of severe malaria resulting in lifelong disability or death is highest for young children and pregnant women across transmission environments robert w snow et al 2003 on the other hand lost labor time often accounts for the largest portion of the private cost of the disease this implies a trade off between minimizing the income lost to malaria and minimizing the risk that a household member dies or is permanently disabled despite public health messages emphasizing the importance of using mosquito nets to protect young children from malaria nets are often used by adults when a household does not have enough nets to cover all members eline l korenromp et al 2003 frederick mugisha and jacqueline arinaitwe 2003 determining the welfare maximizing allocation of nets is intrahousehold allocation of free and purchased mosquito nets

microfinance and poverty a macro perspective we test the hypothesis that microfinance reduces poverty at the macro level using cross country and panel data which are constructed by the microfinance information exchange data on microfinance institutions mfis and the world bank data taking account of the endogeneity associated with mfis loans we show that a country with higher mfis gross loan portfolio per capita tends to have lower levels of poverty indices contrary to recent micro evidence our results suggest that microfinance significantly reduces poverty at macro level and thus reinforce the case for channeling funds from development finance institutions and governments of developing countries into mfis

china s uneven progress against poverty while the incidence of extreme poverty in china fell dramatically over 1980 2001 progress was uneven over time and across provinces rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor though migration to urban areas helped the pattern of growth mattered rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth agriculture played a far more important role than the secondary or tertiary sources of gross domestic product gdp rising inequality within the rural sector greatly slowed poverty reduction provinces starting with relatively high inequality saw slower progress against poverty due both to lower growth and a lower growth elasticity of poverty reduction taxation of farmers and inflation hurt the poor external trade had little short term impact

measuring global poverty why ppp methods matter abstract we present theory and evidence to suggest that in the context of analyzing global poverty the eks approach to estimating purchasing power parities yields more appropriate international comparison of real incomes than the geary khamis approach our analysis of the 1996 and 2005 international comparison project data confirms that the geary khamis approach substantially overstates the relative incomes of the world s poorest nations and this leads to misleading comparisons of poverty across regions and over time the eks index of real income is much closer to being a true index of economic welfare and is therefore preferred for assessment of global poverty

an exploration of the changes in the international comparison program s global economic landscape abstract the purchasing power parity ppp rates from the 2011 round of the international comparison program icp imply some dramatic revisions to price levels and real incomes across the world as compared to the prior 2005 round this has important implications for many cross country comparisons including measures of poverty and inequality without presuming that either round is better methodologically the paper tries to help the community of icp users better understand the economic factors underlying the estimated changes in price levels across countries differences in domestic inflation rates have played a role as expected two other factors are identified the excess sensitivity to changes in market exchange rates suggests that the ppps may put higher weight on internationally traded goods than do domestic deflators additionally faster growing countries have seen a steeper rise in their ppp relative to market exchange rates this can be explained by a tendency for wage increases in growing economies to lead to a higher price level together these factors account for over 70 of the variance in ppp changes even ignoring methodological changes however an independent downward drift in price levels is also evident concentrated in the icp s asia region a possible explanation lies in the asia region s greater success relative to other regions in removing urban bias in the price surveys

weakly relative poverty prevailing measures of relative poverty are unchanged when all incomes grow or contract by the same proportion this property stems from seemingly implausible assumptions about the disutility of relative deprivation and the cost of social inclusion the authors propose weakly relative lines that relax these assumptions on calibrating our measures to national poverty lines and survey data we find that half the population of the developing world in 2005 lived in poverty only half of whom were absolutely poor the total number of poor rose over 1981 to 2005 despite falling numbers of absolutely poor with sustained economic growth the incidence of relative poverty became less responsive to further growth the number of relatively poor rose just as the numbers of absolutely poor fell

dynamics of demand for index insurance evidence from a long run field experiment this paper estimates how experimentally manipulated experiences with a novel financial product rainfall index insurance affect subsequent insurance demand using a seven year panel we develop three main findings first recent experience matters for demand consistent with overinference from small samples second spillovers also matter in the sense that the recent payout experience of village co residents affects insurance demand about as much as one s own recent payout experience third the spillover effect decays as time passes while the effect of one s own experience does not we discuss implications of this analysis for commercial sustainability of this complicated but promising risk management technology

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

measuring poverty in a growing world or measuring growth in a poor world the extent to which growth reduces global poverty has been disputed for 30 years although there are better data than ever before controversies are not resolved a major problem is that consumption measured from household surveys which is used to measure poverty grows less rapidly than consumption measured in national accounts in the world as a whole and in large countries particularly india china and the united states in consequence measured poverty has fallen less rapidly than appears warranted by measured growth in poor countries one plausible cause is that richer households are less likely to participate in surveys but growth in the national accounts is also upward biased and consumption in the national accounts contains large and rapidly growing items that are not consumed by the poor and not included in surveys so it is possible for consumption of the poor to grow less rapidly than national consumption without any increase in measured inequality current statistical procedures in poor

what impedes efficient adoption of products evidence from randomized sales offers for fuel efficient cookstoves in uganda consumers failure to adopt products with health and wellbeing benefits apparently far greater than their costs has consistentlychallenged the widespread use of health improving technologies a sales offer combining free trial time payments and the option of returning the product can overcome barriers such as liquidityconstraints and poor information about benefits and usability we tested this sales offer and alternatives in an experiment with a fuel efficient charcoal stove in urban uganda and a fuel efficient wood stove in rural uganda this offer dramatically increased uptake in urban kampala from 4 to 46 and in rural mbarara from 5 to 57

can higher prices stimulate product use evidence from a field experiment in zambia the controversy over how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests in part on whether higher prices can increase use either by targeting distribution to high use households a screening effect or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk cost effect we develop a methodology for separating these two effects we implement the methodology in a field experiment in zambia using door to door marketing of a home water purification solution we find evidence of economically important screening effects by contrast we find no consistent evidence of sunk cost effects jel c93 d12 i11 m31 o12

growth still is good for the poor incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes this is because in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes in average income the variation in changes in quintile shares is also small relative to the variation in growth in average incomes implying that the latter accounts for most of the variation in income growth in the poorest quintiles these findings hold across most regions and time periods and when conditioning on a variety of country level factors that may matter for growth and inequality changes this evidence confirms the central importance of economic growth for poverty reduction and illustrates the difficulty of identifying specific macroeconomic policies that are significantly associated with the relative growth rates of those in the poorest quintiles

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

eliciting and utilizing willingness to pay evidence from field trials in northern ghana we utilize the becker degroot marschak 1964 mechanism to estimate the willingness to pay for clean drinking water technology in northern ghana the bdm mechanism has attractive properties for empirical research allowing us to directly estimate demand compute heterogeneous treatment effects and study the screening and causal effects of prices with minor modifications to a standard field experiment setting we demonstrate the implementation of bdm along these three dimensions compare it to the standard take it or leave it method for eliciting willingness to pay and discuss practical issues for implementing the mechanism in true field settings jel classifications c93 d12 d82 l11 l31

innovation and intangible investment in europe japan and the united states this paper sets out theory and measurement of how intangible investment might capture innovation and what data on intangibles look like for the eu japan and the us we also look at complementarities between information and communications technology ict and intangibles spillovers from intangibles to growth and policy implications copyright 2013 oxford university press

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

potential of and constraints to the rice green revolution in mozambique a case study of the chokwe irrigation scheme abstract this paper investigates the potential of and constraints to a lowland rice green revolution in mozambique using data from an agro climatically favorable area the chokwe irrigation scheme our data show that although the potential is high the insufficient supply of irrigation water excessively expensive chemical fertilizer and moderately costly labor hinder the scheme from achieving that potential first of all an improvement in irrigation is crucial as it increases yield not only directly but also indirectly through its complementary relationship to chemical fertilizer we also find that an improvement in credit access is important as it can increase the application of chemical fertilizer and labor by making the acquisition of these expensive inputs through markets possible the unavailability of hired and exchange labor during peak seasons is another constraint to the intensive use of labor the introduction of rice varieties with a shorter maturity duration would relax the timing of transplanting and thus spread out the peak seasons labor demand

the illusion of sustainability this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled the illusion of sustainability conducted during the time period 1998 to 2001 in kenya the study observed that deworming is a public good since much of its social benefit comes through reduced disease transmission people were less likely to take deworming if their direct first order or indirect second order social contacts were exposed to deworming the introduction of a small fee for deworming drugs led to an 80 percent reduction in treatment rates take up was not sensitive to the exact price level suggesting that it is particularly counter productive to charge small positive prices for the treatment of infectious diseases an intensive school health education had no impact on worm prevention funding for the study derived from world bank nih fogarty international center berkeley center for health research

rising trends and variability of rice prices threats and opportunities for sub saharan africa abstract nearly 40 of the rice consumed in africa is imported that is about one third of all rice traded in world markets with such high dependence on imports africa is highly exposed to international market shocks with sometimes grave consequences for its food security and political stability as attested by events during the 2008 food crisis in this paper it is argued that africa can turn the rising trends in world markets to a historical opportunity to realize its large potential for rice production after a review of the policy responses of african countries to the 2008 global rice crisis the opportunities and challenges for enhancing domestic rice supply are discussed the competitiveness of rice production in africa is analyzed for selected countries and rice ecologies the potential for increasing paddy production is illustrated using a spreadsheet simulation that considers alternative rice sector development scenarios reducing the yield gap and expanding cultivated rice areas under lowland and irrigated hold the greatest potential for substantially increasing paddy production in africa

stoves or sugar willingness to adopt improved cookstoves in malawi malawi has set a target of adoption of two million improved cookstoves ics by 2020 meeting this objective requires knowledge about determinants of adoption particularly in rural areas where the cost of traditional cooking technologies and fuels are non monetary and where people have limited capacity to purchase an ics we conducted a discrete choice experiment with 383 households in rural malawi asking them if they would chose a locally made ics or a package of sugar and salt of roughly equal value six months later we assessed adoption and stove use patterns sixty six percent of households chose the ics we find that having a larger share of crop residues in household fuel supply awareness of the environmental impacts of woodfuel reliance time the primary cook devotes to collecting fuelwood and peer effects at the village level increase the odds of choosing the ics having a large labor supply for fuelwood collection and experience with a non traditional cooking technology decreased the odds of choosing the ics in a rapid assessment six months after stoves were distributed we found 80 of households were still using the ics but not exclusively our findings suggest considerable potential for wide scale adoption of ics in malawi

a comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa abstract maize sector policies in eastern and southern africa are characterized by a large and often growing presence of the state yet the scope scale and modalities of state activities vary substantially across countries drawing on data from malawi zambia kenya and mozambique this article compares the relative degree of state intervention in the maize sector we show that relative preferences for output market subsidies input market subsidies trade restrictions or non interventionist approaches reflect the interplay of interest group lobbying patronage networks and ethnic and regional political affiliations these relationships have deep historical roots and have often been intensified in the context of the emergence of multiparty politics we show that interventionist orientations in output markets and trade do not translate into better performance or welfare outcomes input subsidy preferences produce more ambiguous welfare results when the opportunity costs are not fully accounted for

the mdgs and exit time the case of the philippines this article evaluates whether the philippines will be able to halve the incidence of poverty between 1990 and 2015 using the concept of exit time and household level data we find that the philippines as a whole will not be able to comply with target 1 of the millennium development goals mdgs although 15 of its provinces will be able to do so these provinces are closer to manila characterized by higher per capita expenditure growth rates and had lower incidence of poverty in 1988 this suggests the importance of policies to mitigate the regional disparity in achieving the mdgs

agriculture reform and food crisis in syria impacts on poverty and inequality abstract the paper pursues a twofold objective from a methodological viewpoint it shows how to carry out an impacts evaluation of exogenous shocks on poverty and inequality in a context characterised by out of equilibrium poorly adjusting markets as it is the case in many developing countries using a social accounting matrix framework from an empirical viewpoint it provides an assessment of how the cereal price spikes of 2007 2008 and the global recession of 2008 2009 have impacted the welfare of syrian households and how did they compound with the on going agricultural sector liberalisation implemented by the government of syria since mid 1990s this will contribute to shed some lights on the economic background behind the spreading of unrest across the country over the last couple of years or so the results show that liberalisation impacts are very different and largely affected by the adopted budget closure rules while reforms aiming at reducing agricultural market distortions such as production subsidies and price support for strategic crops could generally have a positive effect on growth poverty and inequality the elimination of food security interventions such as food stamp schemes determines an adverse distributional impact against rural household and an increase of poverty the recent macroeconomic shocks food price crisis and the global recession determined a generalised poverty increase and showed an income distribution bias against rural households three fundamental policy implications can be drawn by this study first the liberalisation of agricultural sector shows a significant growth potential and is likely to determine positive effects on poverty through a generalised increase of incomes as well as public budget savings that could be used for pursuing other policy goals second in the short run there is a structural trade off between equity improvements and poverty alleviation the policy options that will more likely reduce absolute poverty show undesirable distributive biases both on overall inequality and on rural households vis a vis urban households third the reform should include a careful design of the use of budget savings mainly to address equity goals that are likely to be generated in the short run by liberalisation

measuring and understanding behavior welfare and poverty angus deaton delivered his prize lecture on tuesday 8 december 2015 at the aula magna stockholm university these are the lecture slides this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

estimating the scale and geography of global poverty now and in the future how much difference do method and assumptions make summary estimates of the historic and future scale and location or geography of global poverty by income expenditure have a long and contentious history in recent projections made on global poverty methods and assumptions vary so widely it is impossible to compare studies in a systematic way even on their estimates of current poverty in light of this we discuss the methodological issues arising and use a custom built model to provide a new consistent set of long run estimates of global poverty to show the impact of different methods and assumptions on the scale and location of global poverty

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

micro loans insecticide treated bednets and malaria evidence from a randomized controlled trial in orissa india we describe findings from the first large scale cluster randomized controlled trial in a developing country that evaluates the uptake of a health protecting technology insecticide treated bednets itns through micro consumer loans as compared to free distribution and control conditions despite a relatively high price 52 percent of sample households purchased itns highlighting the role of liquidity constraints in explaining earlier low adoption rates we find mixed evidence of improvements in malaria indices we interpret the results and their implications within the debate about cost sharing sustainability and liquidity constraints in public health initiatives in developing countries

is it enough evidence from a natural experiment in india s agriculture markets access to information and communication technologies icts such as mobile phone networks is widely known to improve market efficiency in this paper we examine whether access to timely and accurate information provided through ict applications has any additional impact using a detailed data set from reuters market light rml a text message service in india that provides daily price information to market participants we find that this information reduces the geographic price dispersion of crops in rural communities by an average of 12 over and above access to mobile phone technology and other means of communication to identify the effect of information on price dispersion we exploit a natural experiment where bulk text messages were banned unexpectedly across india for 12 days in 2010 we find that besides reducing geographic price dispersion rml also increases the rate at which prices converge across india over time we discuss the implications of this for development organizations and informat

agricultural distortions in sub saharan africa trade and welfare indicators 1961 to 2004 for decades agricultural price and trade policies in sub saharan africa have hampered farmers contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction although there has been much policy reform over the past two decades the injections of agricultural development funding together with ongoing regional and global trade negotiations have brought distortionary policies under the spotlight once again a key question asked of those policies is how much are they still reducing national economic welfare and trade economy wide models are able to address that question but they are not available for many poor countries even where they are typically they apply to just one particular previous year and so are unable to provide trends in effects over time this paper provides a partial equilibrium alternative to economy wide modeling by drawing on a modification of so called trade restrictiveness indexes to provide theoretically precise indicators of the trade and welfare effects of agricultural policy distortions to producer and consumer prices over the past half century the authors generate time series of country level indexes as well as africa wide aggregates they also provide annual commodity market indexes for the region and a sense of the relative importance of the key policy instruments used

price subsidies diagnostic tests and targeting of malaria treatment evidence from a randomized controlled trial author s dupas pascaline cohen jessica schaner simone abstract both under and over treatment of communicable diseases are public bads but efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other using rich experimental data on household treatment seeking behavior in kenya we study the implications of this tradeoff for subsidizing life saving antimalarials sold over the counter at retail drug outlets we show that a very high subsidy such as the one under consideration by the international community dramatically increases access but nearly half of subsidized pills go to patients without malaria we study two ways to better target subsidized drugs reducing the subsidy level and introducing rapid malaria tests over the counter

microcredit and willingness to pay for environmental quality evidence from a randomized controlled trial of finance for sanitation in rural cambodia low willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality in developing countries is a key research question in environmental economics one explanation is that missing credit markets may suppress wtp for environmental improvements that require large up front investments we test the impact of microloans on wtp for hygienic latrines via a randomized controlled trial in 30 villages in rural cambodia we find that microcredit dramatically raises wtp for improved latrines with 60 of households in the financing arm willing to purchase at an unsubsidized price relative to 25 in the non financing arm effects on latrine installation are positive but muted by several factors including a negative peer effect randomly induced purchases by neighbors reduce a household s probability of installing its own latrine on methodological grounds this paper shows that a decision focused evaluation can be integrated into academic analysis to provide insight into questions of general interest

preferences for improved cook stoves evidence from rural villages in north india abstract because emissions from solid fuel burning in traditional stoves impact global climate change the regional environment and household health there is today real interest in improved cook stoves ics nonetheless surprisingly little is known about what households like about these energy products we report on preferences for biomass burning ics attributes in a large sample of 2120 rural households in north india a global hotspot for biomass fuel use and the damages that such use entails households have a strong baseline reliance and preference for traditional stoves a preference that outweighs the 10 and 5 willingness to pay wtp for realistic 33 reductions in smoke emissions and fuel needs on average respectively preferences for stove attributes are also highly varied and correlated with a number of household characteristics e g expenditures gender of household head patience and risk preferences these results suggest that households exhibit cautious interest in some aspects of ics but that widespread adoption is unlikely because many households appear to prefer traditional stoves over ics with similar characteristics the policy community must therefore support a reinvigorated supply chain with complementary infrastructure investments foster experimentation with products encourage continued applied research and knowledge generation and provide appropriate incentives to consumers if ics distribution is to be scaled up

free distribution or cost sharing evidence from a randomized malaria prevention experiment author s cohen jessica dupas pascaline abstract it is often argued that cost sharing charging a subsidized positive price for a health product is necessary to avoid wasting resources on those who will not use or do not need the product we explore this argument through a field experiment in kenya in which we randomized the price at which prenatal clinics could sell long lasting anti malarial insecticide treated nets itns to pregnant women we find no evidence that costsharing reduces wastage on those that will not use the product women who received free itns are not less likely to use them than those who paid subsidized positive prices we also find no evidence that costsharing induces selection of women who need the net more those who pay higher prices appear no sicker than the average prenatal client in the area in terms of measured anemia an important indicator of malaria cost sharing does however considerably dampen demand we find that uptake drops by 75 percent when the price of itns increases from zero to 0 75 i e from 100 to 87 5 percent subsidy the price at which itns are currently sold to pregnant women in kenya we combine our estimates in a cost effectiveness analysis of itn prices on child mortality that incorporates both private and social returns to itn usage overall our results suggest that free distribution of itns could save many more lives than cost sharing programs have achieved so far and given the large positive externality associated with widespread usage of itns it would likely do so at a lesser cost per life saved

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

short run subsidies and long run adoption of new health products evidence from a field experiment short run subsidies for health products are common in poor countries how do they affect long run adoption a common fear among development practitioners is that one off subsidies may negatively affect long run adoption through reference dependence people might anchor around the subsidized price and be unwilling to pay more for the product later but for experience goods one off subsidies could also boost long run adoption through learning this paper uses data from a two stage randomized pricing experiment in kenya to estimate the relative importance of these effects for a new improved antimalarial bed net reduced form estimates show that a one time subsidy has a positive impact on willingness to pay a year later inherit to separately identify the learning and anchoring effects we estimate a parsimonious experience good model estimation results show a large positive learning effect but no anchoring we black then discuss the types of products and the contexts inherit for which these results may apply

world welfare is rising estimation using nonparametric bounds on welfare measures abstract i take a new approach to measuring world inequality and welfare over time by constructing robust bounds for these series instead of imposing parametric assumptions to compute point estimates i derive sharp bounds on the atkinson inequality index that are valid for any underlying distribution of income conditional on given fractile shares and gini coefficients while the bounds are too wide to reject the hypothesis that world inequality may have risen i show that world welfare rose unambiguously between 1970 and 2006 this conclusion is valid for alternative methods of dealing with countries and years with missing surveys alternative survey harmonization procedures alternative gdp series or if the inequality surveys used systematically underreport the income of the very rich or suffer from nonresponse bias

the renminbi and poor country growth the renminbi and poor country growth discussions on how best to exit from global imbalances to create a more balanced world economy have ignored the impact on poor countries of proposals to redress these imbalances this paper aims at filling that gap it gauges the degree of renminbi rmb undervaluation presents evidence on rmb undervaluation and china s gdp growth rate surveys the role of the real effective exchange rate both its level and its stability over time for underpinning growth in developing countries especially in large dual economies such as china and india and finally presents new evidence on growth linkages between china and poor countries for the last two decades and surveys literature on potential displacement effects of rmb appreciation the analysis allows broad conclusions to be drawn about the potential developing country beneficiaries and losers from various renminbi adjustment scenarios in the forthcoming years

the impact of the household decision environment on fuel choice behavior abstract consumer preferences for fuels and alternative cookstove technologies in kenya are examined focusing on household internal and external determinants driving choice behavior in a choice experiment the potential for a transition towards cleaner and more efficient fuels and technologies is assessed by zooming in on three fuel stove combinations we find substantial demand and positive willingness to pay for the fuel stove combinations in three locations representing different decision environments demand is significantly higher in the peri urban and the resource abundant rural location than in the resource scarce rural location the presence of better developed consumer markets for fuels in these locations functions as an important driver for cookstove adoption although charcoal and ethanol stoves are preferred over improved firewood stoves continued firewood usage is expected energy switching behavior cannot be substantiated instead energy stacking is more likely where charcoal and ethanol add to and extend a household s energy portfolio

the global distribution of trademarks some stylized facts trademarks are words signs symbols or combinations thereof that identify goods as manufactured by a particular person or a company therefore allowing consumers to distinguish between goods originating in different sources trademarks belong to the wider family of intellectual property rights iprs and once registered benefit from legal protection against unauthorized use by entities other than the legal owner while some suggest that cross border registrations of iprs may be associated with welfare transfers from developing to industrial countries surprisingly little is known about an important component of the global ipr system namely the worldwide distribution of trademark registrations this study provides the first step in filling this gap in the literature its purpose is to present some new stylized facts which emerge from the analysis of a dataset compiled by the authors based on the statistical information published by the world intellectual property organization wipo questions of interest include the distribution of trademarks between countries of different income levels the share of trademark registrations accounted for by foreign residents and its variation across different income groups the extent to which poor countries participate in the international trademark system and the distribution of registrations across different sectors of the economy

one off subsidies and long run adoption experimental evidence on improved cooking stoves in senegal free technology distribution can be an effective development policy instrument if market driven adoption is socially inefficient and hampered by affordability constraints yet policy makers often oppose free distribution arguing that reference dependence lowers the willingness to pay wtp and thus market potentials in the long run for improved cookstoves this paper studies the wtp six years after a randomized one time free distribution in 2009 we demonstrate that the cookstoves were intensely used by the treatment group households in the years after randomization until they reached their designated lifetime using a real purchase offer we find that both treatment and control households reveal a remarkably high wtp in 2015 the estimated confidence interval suggests that we can exclude a substantial negative effect on the treatment group the policy implication is that one time free distribution does not necessarily undermine future market establishment and thus can be an effective policy instrument if rapid dissemination is the objective

the effect of marketing messages and payment over time on willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves abstract smoke from inefficient biomass cookstoves contributes to global climate change and kills approximately four million people per year cooking technologies such as manufactured fuel efficient cookstoves that mitigate the negative effects of traditional cookstoves exist but adoption rates are low the international development community debates whether this low adoption of fuel efficient cookstoves is due to a lack of adequate product information or due to household financial constraints we ran vickery second price auctions in rural uganda to elicit willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves comparing the effect of informational marketing messages and time payments on willingness to pay a randomized trial tested the following marketing messages this stove can improve health this stove can save time and money and both messages combined none of the messages consistently increased willingness to pay in a second experiment we compared willingness to pay for two different contracts one with payment due within a week and one with equal installment payments over 4 weeks consistent with household financial constraints time payments raised willingness to pay by 40

preferences and the home bias in trade abstract why is there less observed trade than is predicted by neoclassical trade models a home bias in consumption due to preferences can partially explain this using data from a randomly assigned auction mechanism and survey conducted in madagascar respondents willingness to pay for rice of varying quality and origin is investigated by imposing a novel structure on traditional valuation collection methods one finds that consumers will pay approximately 8 more for home grown rice the key result is that consumers place greater value on an item produced in their own country without any tangible reason to do so other than the product s origin this preference based explanation is one piece of the mosaic of factors that cause disproportionate consumption of domestically produced goods this paper provides concrete evidence in favor of structuring trade models to allow for an explicit home bias in preferences

china s soaring vehicle population even greater than forecasted abstract china s vehicle population is widely forecasted to grow 6 11 per year into the foreseeable future barring aggressive policy intervention or a collapse of the chinese economy we suggest that those forecasts are conservative we analyze the historical vehicle growth patterns of seven of the largest vehicle producing countries at comparable times in their motorization history we estimate vehicle growth rates for this analogous group of countries to have 13 17 per year roughly twice the rate forecasted for china by others applying these higher growth rates to china results in the total vehicle fleet reaching considerably higher volumes than forecasted by others implying far higher global oil use and carbon emissions than projected by the international energy agency and others

on the measurement of poverty official statistics in the united states and the united kingdom show a rise in poverty between the 1970 s and the 1980 s but scepticism has been expressed with regard to these findings in particular the methods employed in the measurement of poverty have been the subject of criticism this paper re examines three basic issues in measuring poverty the choice of the poverty line the index of poverty and the relation between poverty and inequality one general theme running through the paper is that there is a diversity of judgments which enter the measurement of poverty and that it is necessary to recognize these explicitly in the procedures adopted there is likely to be disagreement about the choice of poverty line affecting both its level and its structure in this situation we may only be able to make comparisons and not to measure differences and the comparisons may lead only to a partial rather than a complete ordering the first section of the paper discusses the stochastic dominance conditions which allow such comparisons illustrating their application by reference to data for the united states the choice of poverty measure has been the subject of an extensive literature and a variety of measures have been proposed in the second section of the paper a different approach is suggested considering a class of measures satisfying certain general properties and seeking conditions under which all members of the class which includes many of those proposed give the same ranking those sceptical about measures of poverty often assert that poverty and inequality are being confounded the third section of the paper distinguishes four different viewpoints and relates them to theories of justice and views of social welfare

the effects of risk and shocks on non farm enterprise development in rural ethiopia summary this paper assesses the impact of risk and shocks on non farm enterprise development in rural ethiopia using a matched household enterprise community dataset augmented with precipitation based measures of risk the likelihood of running a non farm firm and the returns to running such firms co vary with agricultural productivity shocks diversification into non farm activities thus provides limited protection against fluctuations in agricultural performance this may explain why ex ante risk has no impact on the likelihood of running a non farm firm it nonetheless hampers non farm enterprise development by repressing investment and inducing sorting into less capital intensive activities

measuring energy poverty focusing on what matters abstract the provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development and is central to the everyday lives of people effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information base metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool this paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty drawing on those insights it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty both the associated methodology and initial results for several african countries are discussed whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy or the degree of development related to energy our new index the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services it captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty and provides a new tool to support policy making

inequality among world citizens 1820 1992 this paper investigates the distribution of well being among world citizens during the last two centuries the estimates show that inequality of world distribution of income worsened from the beginning of the 19th century to world war ii and after that seems to have stabilized or to have grown more slowly in the early 19th century most inequality was due to differences within countries later it was due to differences between countries inequality in longevity also increased during the 19th century but then was reversed in the second half of the 20th century perhaps mitigating the failure of income inequality to improve in the last decades jel d31 f0 n0 o0