urbanization and poverty reduction the role of rural diversification and secondary towns a rather unique panel tracking more than 3 300 individuals from households in rural kagera tanzania during 1991 4 2010 shows that about one in two individuals households who exited poverty did so by transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy or secondary towns only one in seven exited poverty by migrating to a large city although those moving to a city experienced on average faster consumption growth further analysis of a much larger cross country panel of 51 developing countries cannot reject that rural diversification and secondary town development lead to more inclusive growth patterns than metropolitization indications are that this follows because more of the poor find their way to the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns than to distant cities the development discourse would benefit from shifting beyond the rural urban dichotomy and focusing instead more on how best to urbanize and develop the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns

why don t remittances appear to affect growth although measured remittances by migrant workers have soared in recent years macroeconomic studies have difficulty detecting their effect on economic growth this paper reviews existing explanations for this puzzle and proposes three new ones first it offers evidence that a large majority of the recent rise in measured remittances may be illusory arising from changes in measurement not changes in real financial flows second it shows that even if these increases were correctly measured cross country regressions would have too little power to detect their effects on growth third it points out that the greatest driver of rising remittances is rising migration which has an opportunity cost to economic product at the origin net of that cost there is little reason to expect large growth effects of remittances in the origin economy migration and remittances clearly have first order effects on poverty at the origin on the welfare of migrants and their families and on global gross domestic product but detecting their effects on growth of the origin economy is likely to remain elusive

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

involuntary non standard employment and the economic crisis regional insights from the uk green a e and livanos i involuntary non standard employment and the economic crisis regional insights from the uk regional studies increases in unemployment and non employment in the 2008 2009 economic crisis were less marked than expected in the uk given experience of previous recessions to capture more fully the regional dimensions of economic crisis it is necessary to look also at employment using labour force survey lfs data on involuntary part time working and involuntary temporary working a measure of involuntary non standard employment ine is constructed econometric analyses reveal that there were rises in ine alongside unemployment increases in the economic crisis and that young people individuals from non white ethnic groups and those in weak regional economies were particularly at risk of ine

the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts beatty c and fothergill s 2005 the diversion from unemployment to sickness across british regions and districts regional studies 39 837 854 around 2 7 million non employed adults of working age in the uk claim sickness related benefits and the numbers have risen steeply over time the very large variation in the numbers across districts and regions points strongly to extensive hidden unemployment especially in older industrial areas affected by job losses this paper builds on two previous papers by the same authors one dealing with the theoretical framework and the other with a local case study to present wholly new estimates of the scale of the diversion across all parts of the country it also questions contemporary perceptions of the uk labour market and the validity of current approaches to re engaging sickness claimants with employment

inclusive growth in cities a sympathetic critique abstractthe concept of inclusive growth a concern with the pace and pattern of growth has become a new mantra in local economic development despite enthusiasm from some policy makers others argue it is a buzzword which is changing little this paper summarizes and critiques this agenda there are important unresolved issues with the concept of inclusive growth which is conceptually fuzzy and operationally problematic has only a limited evidence base and reflects an overconfidence in local government s ability to create or shape growth yet while imperfect an inclusive growth model is better than one which simply ignores distributional concerns

from the fringe to the fore labor unions and employee compensation conventional wisdom suggests that labor unions raise worker wages while the newer empirical literature finds only negligible earnings effects i reconcile this apparent contradiction by arguing th

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

the growth in involuntary part time employment of men and women this study presents an economic model that explains the growth in involuntary part time employment the results of three stage least squares estimation show that for men and women similar factors have influenced involuntary part time employment its growth has been encouraged by downturns in the business cycle and expansion of the service sector declines in the percent of the population under 5 years of age and increases in the level of skill among the employed have had the opposite effect

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

liquidity constrained markets versus debt constrained markets this paper compares two different models in a common environment the first model has liquidity constraints in that consumers save a single asset that they cannot sell short the second model has debt constraints in that consumers cannot borrow so much that they would want to default but is otherwise a standard complete markets model both models share the features that individuals are unable to completely insure against idiosyncratic shocks and that interest rates are lower than subjective discount rates in a stochastic environment the two models have quite different dynamic properties with the debt constrained model exhibiting simple stochastic steady states while the liquidity constrained model has greater persistence of shocks

the impact of unemployment insurance benefit levels on recipiency this article studies the effect of unemployment insurance benefit levels on recipiency increasing benefit levels as measured by the fraction of weekly earnings of the lost job that they replace is found to significantly increase the probability of unemployment insurance recipiency among the eligible there is some evidence however that the effect is smaller at high replacement rates cost increases resulting from take up responses are found to be substantial for increases in the state s maximum benefit amount and for increases in the weekly benefit amount in low replacement rate states

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

the macroeconomics of populism in latin america by populism this paper refers to an economic approach that emphasizes growth and income redistribution and deemphasizes the risks of inflation and deficit finance external constraints and the reaction of economic agents to aggressive nonmarket policies it analyzes two instances of populism chile under allende and peru under garcia these experiences are described in detail not as a righteous assertion of conservative economics but as a warning that populist policies ultimately fail and always at a frightening cost to the groups they were supposed to benefit this paper explores the question of whether some variant of populist policies could succeed it suggests that populist policies could succeed if they stayed clear of foreign exchange constraints emphasized reactivation for a brief initial period and then shifted to growth policies most important expansionary policies must reflect awareness of capacity constraints and must rely for financing on an extremely orthodox fiscal policy and rigorous tax adminsitration the paper concludes by warning that imf style policies unconcerned with growth of social progress may establish financial stability in the short run but inevitably open the door to yet another round of destructive reaction in the form of populist policies

the effect of unions on the receipt of unemployment insurance benefits using national longitudinal survey of youth data for 1979 91 the authors analyze the effect of union representation on the likelihood that individuals eligible for unemployment insurance ui bene

can the paris deal boost sdgs achievement an assessment of climate mitigation co benefits or side effects on poverty and inequality abstract the paper investigates potential synergies and trade offs between emission reduction policies and sustainable development objectives specifically it provides an ex ante assessment that the impacts of the nationally determined contributions ndcs submitted under the paris agreement will have on the sustainable development goals sdgs of poverty eradication sdg1 and reduced income inequality sdg10 through this research we aim at answering the following questions does mitigation policy always imply a trade off with development objectives if this is the case what is the magnitude of the effect of the new international climate architecture on poverty and inequality by combining an empirical analysis with a modelling exercise the paper estimates the future trends of poverty prevalence and inequality across countries in a reference scenario and under a climate mitigation policy with alternative revenue recycling schemes our study finds that a full implementation of the emission reduction contributions stated in the ndcs is projected to slow down the effort to reduce poverty by 2030 4 2 of the population below the poverty line compared to the baseline scenario especially in countries that have proposed relatively more stringent mitigation targets and suffer higher policy costs conversely the impact of climate policy on inequality shows opposite sign but remains very limited if financial support for mitigation action in developing countries is provided through an international climate fund the prevalence of poverty will be slightly reduced at the aggregate level but the country specific effect depends on the relative size of funds flowing to beneficiary countries and on their economic structure the output of our analysis contributes to the emerging literature on the linkages between climate change policy and sustainable development although we capture only partially the complex system of interrelations and feedbacks proper of the sdgs moreover due to its policy relevance it further enriches the debate on the implementation of the paris agreement and its climate finance tools

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

commitment banks and markets abstract we examine how banks and financial markets interact with one another to provide liquidity to investors the critical assumption is that financial markets are characterized by limited enforcement of contracts and in the event of default only a fraction of borrowers assets can be seized limited enforcement reduces the fraction of assets that can be used as collateral and thus individuals subject to liquidity shocks face borrowing constraints we show how banks endogenously overcome these borrowing constraints by pooling resources across several depositors and increase the liquidity provided by financial markets

agriculture structural transformation and poverty reduction eight new insights abstract whether the sector of growth matters for the speed of poverty reduction why and how best to invest to maximize the poverty reducing effects of sectoral growth remain topics of intense debate drawing on the more recent history and applying a range of methods the papers in this special issue confirm the view that growth in agriculture is on average more poverty reducing than an equivalent amount of growth outside agriculture they also add important nuances to this broad empirical regularity uncover a series of structural conditions that affect this relation and show that different mechanisms to finance public investment to boost sectoral growth deficit financing taxation or aid can have widely different impacts on poverty a widely ignored issue so far they do so by going beyond the traditional agriculture nonagriculture dichotomy also looking at the subsectors and the differential effects of prices versus productivity they further distinguish between production for home and market consumption between modern outward oriented and informal domestically focused firms as well as between secondary towns and cities eight key insights emerge

trade liberalization inequality and poverty in brazilian states this paper studies the impact of trade liberalization and international trade on household income inequality and poverty using detailed micro data across brazilian states from 1987 to 2005 results suggest that brazilian states that were more exposed to tariff cuts experienced smaller reductions in household poverty and inequality if significance of results on brazilian states depends on the choice of poverty and inequality indicators robust and contrasting results emerge when we disaggregate into rural and urban areas within states trade liberalization contributes to poverty and inequality increases in urban areas and may be linked to inequality declines in rural areas no significant effect on rural poverty appears from our study in terms of observed integration to world markets import penetration plays a similar role as trade liberalization for brazilian states as a whole on the contrary rising export exposure appears to have significantly reduced both measures of household welfare

when is growth pro poor evidence from a panel of countries abstract growth is pro poor if the poverty measure of interest falls according to this definition there are three potential sources of pro poor growth a a high growth rate of average incomes b a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes and c a poverty reducing pattern of growth in relative incomes i empirically decompose changes in poverty in a sample of developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s into these three components in the medium to long run most of the variation in changes in poverty can be attributed to growth in average incomes suggesting that policies and institutions that promote broad based growth should be central to the pro poor growth agenda most of the remainder of the variation in changes in poverty is due to poverty reducing patterns of growth in relative incomes rather than differences in the sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes cross country evidence provides relatively little guidance as to the policies and institutions that promote these other sources of pro poor growth

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

recessions and the vulnerable abstract this study evaluates the impact of recessions on households vulnerable to poverty the results indicate that recessions impact vulnerable households asymmetrically in comparison to the impact of growth on poor households we also demonstrate that this outcome is significantly influenced by a country s extent of development we argue that a direct consequence of the foregoing is that the efficacy of growth in poverty reduction tends to be under stated by conventional measures of poor households responses to economic growth and that safety nets need to be constructed to incorporate vulnerability to recessions

recent trends in insured and uninsured unemployment is there an explanation this paper explores the recent decline in the fraction of unemployed workers who receive unemployment insurance benefits using march current population surveys we compare the fraction who are potentially eligible for benefits with the fraction who receive them the decline in insured unemployment is almost entirely due to a decline in the early 1980s in the takeup rate for benefits we analyze the determinants of the takeup rate using both aggregated state level data and micro data at least half the decline is due to an increasing share of unemployment in states with lower takeup rates

when does economic growth reduce poverty and strengthen the middle class a state level sector specific analysis of peru using novel state level data of peru from 1997 to 2010 we investigate how growth in different sectors affects poverty rates and the middle class our results indicate that only the manufacturing sector seems to robustly decrease poverty growth in the service sector emerges as a meaningful predictor of a rising middle class allowing for regional differences we find substantial variation across the 25 peruvian states with large shifts in magnitudes signs and statistical importance beyond the immediate implications for peru these findings highlight the importance of analyzing the link between economic performance and poverty rates on a subnational level policy implications are likely to differ substantially depending on the source of economic growth and regional particularities

insights into unemployment and non employment in europe using alternative measures one of the most significant set of papers to come out of the portfolio of regional studies association publications in recent years has concerned the exposure of the levels of hidden unemployment in many of the old industrial areas of britain see for instance labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields regional studies 30 7 1997 627 640 the authors of these papers christina beatty and stephen fothergill have generated a debate that has uncovered major implications for the way the regional problem is measured perceived and tackled although these are important in terms of regional economic development strategies and policies it remains to be seen how the failure to count the real levels of unemployment will impact on the review of regional policy assisted areas the designation of european structural fund areas and the successful introduction of such initiatives as the new deal and welfare to work underpinning and deepening the rigour of t

growth inequality and poverty looking beyond averages the evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction but how much do poor people share in growth do they gain more in some settings than others do some gain while others lose does pro poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth recent theories and evidence suggest some answers but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributed change only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth oriented policies

poverty reduction without economic growth explaining brazil s poverty dynamics 1985 2004 brazil s slow pace of poverty reduction over the last two decades reflects both low growth and a low growth elasticity of poverty reduction using gdp data disaggregated by state and sector for a twenty year period this paper finds considerable variation in the poverty reducing effectiveness of growth across sectors across space and over time growth in the services sector was substantially more poverty reducing than was growth in either agriculture or industry growth in industry had very different effects on poverty across different states and its impact varied with initial conditions related to human development and worker empowerment the determinants of poverty reduction changed around 1994 positive growth rates and a greater absolute elasticity with respect to agricultural growth contributed to faster poverty reduction but because there was so little of it economic growth played a relatively small role in accounting for brazil s poverty reduction between 1985 and 2004 the taming of hyperinflation in 1994 and substantial expansions in social security and social assistance transfers beginning in 1988 accounted for a larger share of the overall reduction in poverty

unemployment insurance takeup rates and the after tax value of benefits the recent decline in the unemployment insurance ui takeup rate has puzzled researchers using administrative data with accurate information on the potential level and duration of benefits we examine whether a separating employee receives ui we find a strong positive effect of the benefit level on takeup and smaller effects of the potential duration and the tax treatment of benefits simulations indicate that the recent inclusion of ui in the income tax base can account for most of the previously unexplained decline in ui receipt

finance inequality nexus the long and the short of it financial development affects income inequality differently in the short and in the long term investigating oecd countries from 1870 2011 we find in the short run an improvement in financial development tends to reduce inequality while in the long run more finance contributes to more inequality the short run effect concurs with theories advocating financial development increases the availability of financial services primarily for the poor however this effect becomes nil within a few years results thus imply that policies aimed at reducing inequality through improving access of the poor to finance need to be carefully designed to ensure longevity of impact

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

mobility housing and labour markets in times of economic crises this special issue addresses the effects of the most recent financial and economic crisis starting in 2007 on mobility housing and labour markets in order to learn some lessons for the future t

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

growth inequality and social welfare cross country evidence social welfare functions that assign weights to individuals based on their income levels can be used to document the relative importance of growth and inequality changes for changes in social welfare in a large panel of industrial and developing countries over the past 40 years most of the cross country and over time variation in changes in social welfare is due to changes in average incomes in contrast the changes in inequality observed during this period are on average much smaller than changes in average incomes are uncorrelated with changes in average incomes and have contributed relatively little to changes in social welfare

convergence in brazil recent trends and long run prospects this paper applies to the analysis of the interstate income distribution in brazil a set of techniques that have been widely used in the current empirical literature on growth and convergence usual measures of dispersion in the interstate income distribution the coefficient of variation and theil s index suggest that sigma convergence was an unequivocal feature of the regional growth experience in brazil between 1970 and 1986 after 1986 the process of convergence seems however to have slowed down almost to a halt a standard growth model is shown to fit the regional data well and to explain a substantial amount of the variation in growth rates providing estimates of the speed of conditional beta convergence of approximately 3 p a different estimates of the long run distribution implied by the recent growth trends point towards further reductions in the interstate income inequality but also suggest that the relative per capita incomes of a significant number of states and the number of very

are involuntary part time workers indeed involuntary theoretically those classified by the bureau of labor statistics as involuntary part time workers are individuals who would like to work full time but have been unable to obtain full time employment to empirically test the accuracy of that definition the author employs simple probit models of employment preferences and employment opportunities estimated with data from the march 1990 current population survey the results confirm that those classified as involuntary part time workers were indeed employed part time involuntarily furthermore those classified as involuntary part time workers in 1990 were at least 50 more likely to be in the full time labor force in 1991 than were those who were classified as voluntary part time workers in 1990

the impact of data revisions on the robustness of growth determinants a note on determinants of economic growth will data tell summary ciccone and jarocinski american economic journal macroeconomics 2010 2 222 246 show that inference in bayesian model averaging bma can be highly sensitive to small data perturbations in particular they demonstrate that the importance attributed to potential growth determinants varies tremendously over different revisions of international income data they conclude that agnostic priors appear too sensitive for this strand of growth empirics in response we show that the found instability owes much to a specific bma set up first comparing the same countries over data revisions improves robustness second much of the remaining variation can be reduced by applying an evenly agnostic but flexible prior copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

estimating the relative benefits of agricultural growth on the distribution of expenditures does the sectoral composition of aggregate economic growth affect poverty we ask whether agricultural growth in developing countries increases the expenditures of poorer households more than growth in other sectors while some reduced form analyses have tackled this question using either country level time series data regional panel data for one country or cross sectional country data this paper is unusual in using panel data for many countries we improve on much of the existing literature by devising an instrumental variables strategy to correct for the endogeneity of sectoral gdp growth involving averaging over sectoral income growth rates for neighboring countries our principal finding from our instrumental variable estimator is that the estimated elasticities associated with growth in agricultural income are significantly greater than for non agricultural income for all but the extreme top and bottom deciles in the middle range of the income distribution the effect of a given gdp growth due to agriculture is 3 4 times larger than if it was due to non agricultural activities having established that on average growth in gdp originating in agriculture is more beneficial for poorer deciles we finally explore whether this is a pattern which holds across different groupings of countries a second important finding is that there is heterogeneity across some groupings most particularly we find that it is the poorest people in the poorest countries for whom agricultural income growth is the most beneficial

the composition of growth matters for poverty alleviation this paper contributes to explain the cross country heterogeneity of the poverty response to changes in economic growth it does so by focusing on the structure of output growth the paper presents a two sector theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which the sectoral composition of growth and associated labor intensity can affect workers wages and thus poverty alleviation then it presents cross country empirical evidence that analyzes first the differential poverty reducing impact of sectoral growth at various levels of disaggregation and the role of unskilled labor intensity in such differential impact the paper finds evidence that not only the size of economic growth but also its composition matters for poverty alleviation with the largest contributions from labor intensive sectors such as agriculture construction and manufacturing the results are robust to the influence of outliers alternative explanations and various poverty measures

what can new survey data tell us about recent changes in distribution and poverty it has been claimed that in recent times the poor have lost ground both relatively and absolutely even when average levels of living have risen this article tests that claim using household surveys for 67 developing and transitional economies over 1981 94 it finds that changes in inequality and polarization were uncorrelated with changes in average living standards distribution improved as often as it worsened in growing economies and negative growth was often more detrimental to distribution than positive growth overall there was a small decrease in absolute poverty although with diverse experiences across regions and countries almost always poverty fell with growth in average living standards and rose with contraction

improving social well being through new democratic institutions we evaluate the role of a new type of democratic institution participatory budgeting pb for improving citizens well being participatory institutions are said to enhance governance citizens empowerment and the quality of democracy creating a virtuous cycle to improve the poor s well being drawing from an original database of brazil s largest cities over the last 20 years we assess whether adopting pb programs influences several indicators of well being inputs processes and outcomes we find pb programs are strongly associated with increases in health care spending increases in civil society organizations and decreases in infant mortality rates this connection strengthens dramatically as pb programs remain in place over longer time frames furthermore pb s connection to well being strengthens in the hand of mayors from the nationally powerful ideologically and electorally motivated workers party our argument directly addresses debates on democracy and well being and has powerful implications for participation governance and economic development

the effects of overtime pay regulation on worker compensation proponents claim that a statutory overtime premium by raising the relative cost of overtime may encourage firms to substitute employment for overtime hours the author argues that there will be no real effects if firms reduce straight time wages so as to offer the same package of weekly compensation and hours of work that was acceptable initially empirical analysis suggests that wage differentials do arise to mitigate the purely demand driven effects predicted by previous models but these differentials are not large enough to neutralize overtime pay regulation completely copyright 1991 by american economic association

are there lessons for africa from china s success against poverty at the outset of china s reform period the country had a far higher poverty rate than for africa as a whole within five years that was no longer true this paper tries to explain how china escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies while acknowledging that africa faces constraints that china did not and that context matters two lessons stand out the first is the importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture which will require both market based incentives and public support the second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government

liquidity creation through banks and markets multiple insurance and limited market access abstract the paper studies the intertemporal allocation of funds through demand deposits and anonymous markets first separately and then in an integrated model it reviews some work on the role of market frictions and asset characteristics and suggests that the interplay between these two is crucial in explaining the observed coexistence of demand deposits and anonymous markets

distributional effects of growth and public expenditures in africa estimates for tanzania and rwanda summary in this paper we explore the effects of fiscal policies and growth on measures of household welfare across the distribution of expenditures for two african countries rwanda and tanzania we explore the effect of government expenditures on expenditure growth in each quintile of the expenditure distribution and the effect of growth for each group we find that the benefits of growth are concentrated among the better off sectors of the population in these two countries perhaps to the detriment of the poorer sectors by looking at the effects within a country and across different groups of households and administrative entities we exploit variation in expenditures and growth across and within regions of each country to estimate the elasticities of expenditure with respect to fiscal expenditure and mean expenditure growth at different points of the expenditure distribution using household survey data and government expenditure data at the district level we find that overall mean expenditure growth benefits the top expenditure groups the welfare spillovers are mostly present for top 20 of the expenditure distribution with the middle of the distribution in tanzania responding slightly to these spillovers public social expenditures do not appear to affect inequality considerably but do tend to work toward decreasing inequality however mean expenditure growth is related to increases in inequality in the sense that the richest sectors of the population benefit the most from growth we find that the growth elasticity of expenditure is only above one for the top quintile in both countries in tanzania a 1 increase in average household expenditure is related to a 1 96 expenditure growth in the top quintile and 0 43 in the third quintile in rwanda a 1 increase in average household expenditure is related to a 1 93 increase in household expenditure in the top 20 of the distribution

can high inequality developing countries escape absolute poverty do the poor face the same prospects for escaping poverty in high inequality developing countries as in low inequality countries is it possible for inequality to be so great as to stifle prospects of reducing absolute poverty even when other initial conditions and policies are favorable to growth household survey data for developing countries suggest that initial distribution does affect how much the poor share in rising average incomes higher initial inequality tends to reduce growth s impact on absolute poverty by the same token higher inequality diminishes the adverse impact on the poor of general economic contraction combining this evidence with that from recent investigations of inequality s effect on growth the author finds that if inequality is high enough countries that would have very good growth prospects at low levels of inequality may see little or no overall growth and little progress in reducing poverty or even a worsening on both counts the data the author uses suggest that such cases do occur the precision with which key parameters have been estimated makes it difficult to say with confidence how common such cases are but they appear to be in the minority what appear to be the best available estimates suggest that about one fifth of the spells between surveys he analyzed were cases in which poverty was rising yet positive growth in the mean and hence falling poverty is predicted at zero inequality inequality can be high enough to result in rising poverty despite good underlying growth prospects

growth and poverty evidence for developing countries in the 1980s abstract measures of consumption poverty for a sample of developing countries in the 1980s respond elastically to changes in mean consumption although there is a high variance in poverty outcomes at a given rate of growth there is no sign of systematic effects of growth on inequality