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

pathways out of poverty in lagging regions evidence from rural western china how to reduce poverty in lagging regions remains much debated and underserved with solid empirical evidence this study illustrates an empirical methodology to analyze the pathways households followed out of poverty and to explore their potential in the future using 20002004 rural household panel data from two lagging provinces of china inner mongolia and gansu it finds that rising labor productivity in agriculture has been key in understanding poverty reduction in rural lagging areas of these provinces and that it still holds much promise circular migration has also been important in gansu though less so in inner mongolia on average rural diversification has not proven to contribute much to poverty reduction and income transfers and agricultural tax abolishment have only helped at the margin the findings from these two case studies highlight that the scope for reducing poverty in rural lagging regions can still be substantial in agriculture also when nonagriculture drives national growth

intragenerational income mobility in latin america economic mobility has not been widely studied in developing countries until very recently owing to the lack of suitable data studying mobility requires longitudinal data tracking economic units that is individuals households or firms over time collecting this type of data is expensive and historically few latin american countries carried it out now however such data sets are available for a number of latin american and caribbean countries table a 1 in the appendix provides a list of available panel data sets that can be used for income mobility studies for these countries in this paper we discuss how the knowledge gleaned from mobility studies differs from comparable cross sectional analysis the structure of the paper is as follows the next section discusses what mobility is how it can be measured and how it differs from inequality the subsequent section reviews previous mobility studies in latin american countries the paper then summarizes the contributions of our own recent work and the final section discusses what lies ahead in mobility research for latin american economies

a multiplier decomposition method to analyze poverty alleviation abstract the objective of this paper is to present a multiplier decomposition method focusing on poverty alleviation the decomposition captures the various mechanisms and linkages through which a production sector s output contributes to poverty alleviation within a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam it is shown that a multiplier can be broken down into two multiplicative effects the distributional and interdependency effects the decomposition method is applied to the case of indonesia a key policy implication is that the human capital of the poor needs to be enhanced if they are not to be sealed off from the industrialization process

did the commodity price spike increase rural poverty evidence from a long run panel in bangladesh we assess the effects of the dramatic rise in agricultural commodity prices during 2007 2008 on income dynamics and poverty among rural households in bangladesh a unique panel data set allows us to put the effects of recent events in the context of long run trends in income and poverty we use data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in bangladesh collected in four waves in 1988 2000 2004 and 2008 nargis and hossain nargis n hossain m 2006 income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in bangladesh 1988 2004 agric econ 35 425 435 analysed income dynamics and poverty incidence for the first three waves finding a declining trend in both the incidence and severity of poverty aided in particular by human capital development and off farm employment opportunities we update and extend the analysis to include data collected in 2008 at the height of a spike in agricultural prices we find that the price of a balanced food basket increased by more than 50 during 2000 2008 while household income rose only 15 as a result the incidence and severity of rural poverty in bangladesh sunk to pre 2000 levels during 2004 2008 thus the price spikes in 2007 2008 helped push an additional 13 million people into poverty in rural bangladesh moreover we find that the determinants of poverty have not been time invariant in particular agricultural production which had previously been associated with a higher incidence of poverty served as a hedge against higher food prices during 2004 2008

malnutrition and the development of rural households in the agreste of paraiba state north east brazil the rural socio economic environment producing childhood malnutrition is considered recent work posits a relationship between landholding and the prevalence of malnutrition this question is re phrased here by introducing household developmental cycles into the argument supported by new data in the context of the class of land and employment poor rural households in the north east these cycles operate to produce a high risk phase of development through which all households have to pass as they mature the prevalence of malnutrition is then explained by specific household characteristics which in turn dictate the effectiveness of the subsistence strategies employed where income is collected together from agriculture and or wage labour a model of household development linked into the landholding structure reveals that using area farmed alone provides an insufficient explanation and indeed understates the severity of the problem

structural drivers of productivity and employment growth a decomposition analysis for 81 countries the paper uses accounting methods to decompose aggregate labour productivity and employment growth into their sectoral components as well as into within sector and employment reallocation effects for a sample of 81 developed and developing countries using data going back to the mid 1980s key findings are that aggregate labour productivity growth for developing countries taken together is driven as much by services as by industry in spite of strong differences between countries and that within sector effects on aggregate labour productivity growth are more important than employment reallocation effects a pattern that holds for all regions

mass education or a minority well educated elite in the process of growth the case of india abstract this paper analyzes whether mass education is more growth enhancing in developing countries than having a minority well educated elite using indian census data as a benchmark and enrollment rates at different levels of education we compute annual attainment levels for a panel of 16 indian states from 1961 to 2001 results indicate that if the reduction in illiteracy stops at the primary level of education it is not worthwhile for growth instead the findings reveal a strong and significant effect on growth of a greater share of population completing tertiary education the economic impact is also found to be large a one percent change in tertiary education has the same effect on growth as a 13 decrease in illiteracy rates a sensitivity analysis shows the results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variables structural breaks reverse causation or atypical observations

composition of household income and child nutrition outcomes evidence from uganda summary this study targets the empirical space between cross country analyses exploring links between income and nutrition without insights on micro level determinants and relevant microeconomic studies hindered by small sample size and or incomplete data we use the rural samples of the three waves of the uganda national panel survey and estimate panel regressions of child height for age z scores haz controlling for time invariant child level heterogeneity on the whole we find no impact of short term changes in total gross income on haz but document small positive correlations for younger children sector differentiated analyses indicate that compared to wage earnings only share of income from non farm self employment correlates positively with haz within agriculture shares of income from consumption of own crop production and from low protein crop production underlie the negative effect of share of income from crop production while we cannot claim causal relationships our findings suggest the possibility of stickiness of crop production to own consumption

a real options approach to the valuation of a forestry investment abstract the theory of real options is used to model the optimal tree harvesting decision the value of the option to harvest is estimated using a dynamic programming approach and a general numerical solution technique suitable for any type of stochastic process for prices the conditions under which the optimal harvest time is independent of price are examined in addition the impact of assuming future lumber prices are mean reverting is considered it is found that option value and optimal cutting time are significantly different under the mean reversion assumption compared to geometric brownian motion

how to improve the management of renewable resources the case of canada s northern cod fishery the paper examines howan easy to apply optimal feedback rule can be used to solve for optimal levels of exploitation of a renewable resource using data from canada s northern cod fishery the optimal feedback rule is used to derive optimal levels of exploitation for the years 1962 91 under different discount rates alternative model specifications and parameter assumptions the optimal feedback rule indicates that over much of the period the fishery was economically overexploited and given the stock development that actually took place a harvesting moratorium should have been instituted three years earlier than when it was introduced the results show how the use of a simple and flexible optimal rule by managers of renewable resources can generate substantial gains many of the earth s environmental problems arise from the exploitation of renewable resources the major causes of overexploitation include attenuated property rights misguided policies poverty and simply a lack of information or understanding about the stocks and flows of resources and the timing and magnitude of environmental shocks 1 where the level of exploitation can be controlled one way to help improve the management of renewable resources is to develop optimal feedback rules as optimal feedback rules are a function of the resource stock they can provide managers with an adaptive method of regulating resource use to achieve defined objectives and to evaluate alternative harvesting strategies

revisiting the effects of imf programs on poverty and inequality investigating how lending programs of the international monetary fund imf affect poverty and inequality we explicitly address model uncertainty we control for endogenous selection into imf programs using data on 86 low and middle income countries for the 1982 2009 period and analyze program effects on various poverty and inequality measures the results rely on averaging over 90 specifications of treatment effect models and indicate adverse short run effects of imf agreements on poverty and inequality for the whole sample while for a 2000 2009 subsample the results are reversed there is evidence that significant short run effects might disappear in the long run author s abstract

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

economic relationship between access to land and rural poverty in nepal in the present socio economic structure of nepal land is the main source of income and consumption for the majority of nepalese this study analyses the economic relationship between access to land and poverty in nepal by establishing the link between land and consumption as well as land and income a generalised additive model gam and ordinary least squares ols demonstrate that greater access to land increases income and consumption of the household and thereby reduces poverty the significant marginal value of land for both consumption and income implies that an effective land reform policy could well be an effective approach to alleviate rural poverty however land reform must come as part of a larger overhaul cluster analysis shows that land reform should target appropriate subgroups within the community in order to differentiate those who would make use of the extra land from those who would not and apply appropriate strategies to each subgroup it reveals the importance of subgroups in determining an appropriate strategy for tackling poverty

determinants of income mobility and household poverty dynamics in south africa this article analyses household income mobility among africans in south africa s most populous province kwazulu natal between 1993 and 1998 compared to industrialised and most developing countries mobility has been quite high as might have been expected after the transition in south africa this finding is robust when measurement error is controlled for when disaggregating the sources of mobility it is found that demographic changes and employment changes account for most of the mobility observed which is related to rapidly shifting household boundaries and a very volatile labour market in an environment of high unemployment using a multivariate analysis it can be seen that transitory incomes play a large role four types of poverty traps are found associated with large initial household size poor initial education poor initial asset endowment and poor initial employment access that dominate the otherwise observed regression towards the mean

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

optimal feedback controls comparative evaluation of the cod fisheries in denmark iceland and norway the economic efficiencies of the danish icelandic and norwegian cod fisheries are examined for this purpose nonlinear aggregate models of these fisheries are constructed comparing the calculated optimal harvest and biomass quantities with the actual fisheries provides a measure of the degree of efficiency in these fisheries the comparisons confirm that the cod harvesting policies of these countries have been hugely inefficient in the past it appears that inefficiency has been increasing over the last three to four decades even after tac regulations replaced open access indicating that the management policies adopted by all three countries have failed to cure overfishing the primary purpose of this article is to compare the relative efficiency of past fish harvesting strategies in iceland norway and denmark by the term harvesting policy we mean the harvesting volume each year so efficiency here merely refers to appropriateness of the annual harvesting volumes it does not in particular refer to the relative efficiency of the fishing industries in the three countries we know that maximizing net revenue has not been an objective in any of these fisheries experience shows that the management regimes that were in place for most of the period were highly inefficient and should be expected to produce poor economic results the mere fact that these stocks feature biomass levels far below the maximum sustainable yield level strongly suggests inefficient policies iceland norway and denmark are all major fishing nations harvesting a number of fish species we have chosen to concentrate on cod fishing as this is the single most important fishragnar arnason is professor faculty of economics and business

sectoral productivity growth and poverty reduction national and global impacts summary this paper examines the implications of productivity improvements in agriculture industry and services for global poverty we find that in poor countries increases in agricultural productivity generally have a larger poverty reduction effect than increases in industry or services this differential declines as average incomes rise partly because agriculture becomes smaller as a share of the economy and partly because agricultural productivity growth becomes less effective in reducing poverty the source of the poverty reduction benefits from agricultural productivity growth changes as innovations are more widely adopted moving from increases in producer returns to reductions in consumer prices

assessing the extent and nature of chronic poverty in low income countries issues and evidence discussions of chronic poverty have mostly considered its monetary dimensions with current evidence suggesting that such poverty is much more transient than chronic but chronic poverty is a real and important phenomenon potentially more important quantitatively than it first appears once account is taken of different methodological approaches and inevitable measurement difficulties the chronic poor have distinctive characteristics such as lack of assets or high dependency rates which may account for their persistent poverty the paper argues that it is also necessary to develop concepts of chronic poverty further covering relevant nonmonetary dimensions and not just relying on panel data

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

global land investments in the bio economy evidence and policy implications for countries dependent on agriculture the recent wave of investor interest in farmland could in principle help set in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth and poverty reduction a large literature documenting failure of such investments documents the risks involved to appreciate associated opportunities and challenges we review past experience quantify country level potential for area expansion versus intensification and identify determinants of countries attractiveness for investors in the initial stages of the land rush the fact that weak land governance seems to increase rather than reduce land demand justifies an emphasis on improving institutions transparency and accountability while at the same time providing concrete suggestions for policy and research

four scenarios of development and the role of economic policy we ask which economic policies can help a country create the most favourable conditions for development we observe that the dynamics of several development indicators can be grouped into four clusters each cluster corresponding to a different combination of growth and changes in inequality based on this observation we define four different development scenarios and use limited dependent variable regressions to study how structural and policy factors affect a country s probability to achieve the most or the least favourable of these scenarios our results point to a comforting picture through the choice of appropriate policies countries can effectively increase their chances to achieve the most favourable development scenario

optimal harvesting of stochastic spatial resources abstract we characterize the optimal harvest of a renewable resource in a generalized stochastic spatially explicit model despite the complexity of the model we are able to obtain sharp analytical results we find that the optimal harvest rule in general depends upon dispersal patterns of the resource across space and only in special circumstances do we find a modified golden rule of growth that is independent of dispersal patterns we also find that the optimal harvest rule may include closure of some areas to harvest either on a temporary or permanent basis biological reserves reserves alone cannot correct open access but may under sufficient spatial heterogeneity and connectivity increase profits if appropriate harvest controls are in place outside of reserves

the poor stay poor household asset poverty traps in rural semi arid india summary although identifying household level poverty dynamics would have important implications for poverty reduction policies empirical evidence is still scant this paper employs a novel semiparametric panel data estimator that combines the advantages of estimation methods in the existing literature and applies it to a uniquely long panel data set to examine poverty dynamics in three villages in rural semi arid india structural immobility is pervasive the currently poor are likely to remain poor suggesting a structural poverty trap while all households face static asset holdings higher castes larger landholders and more educated households are significantly less likely to be poor

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

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

on uncertain renewable resource stocks optimal harvest policies and the value of stock surveys abstract annual harvest quotas are commonly employed in the management of renewable resource stocks commercial fisheries being a prime example such resource stocks often undergo quite significant natural fluctuations to which quotas must be adapted a further complication arises from the fact that estimates of stock abundance are often highly uncertain in this paper a bayesian approach is used to model optimal quota decisions for an uncertain fluctuating renewable resource stock

food prices and poverty do higher food prices help or hinder poverty reduction despite much debate existing research has almost solely relied on simulation models to address this question in this paper world bank poverty estimates are used to systematically test the relationship between changes in poverty and exogenous changes in real domestic food prices the paper uncovers indicative evidence that increases in food prices are associated with reductions in poverty not increases a likely empirical explanation is the relatively strong agricultural supply and wage responses to food price increases and the fact that the majority of the world s poor still heavily rely on agriculture or agriculture related activities to earn a living

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

fishery management under multiple uncertainty abstract among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse roughgarden and smith proc natl acad sci 93 1996 5078 argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management variability in fish dynamics inaccurate stock size estimates and inaccurate implementation of harvest quotas we develop a bioeconomic model with these three sources of uncertainty and solve for optimal escapement based on measurements of fish stock in a discrete time model among other results we find 1 when uncertainties are high we generally reject the constant escapement rule advocated in much of the existing literature 2 inaccurate stock estimation affects policy in a fundamentally different way than the other sources of uncertainty and 3 the optimal policy leads to significantly higher commercial profits and lower extinction risk than the optimal constant escapement policy by 42 and 56 respectively

labour intensive jobs for women and development intra household welfare effects and its transmission channels we examine the welfare impacts of poor women getting low skilled jobs and find large positive income consumption and poverty effects at household and individual levels however the women workers their husbands and oldest daughters reduced their leisure but the women to a much larger extent investigating the transmission mechanisms suggests that the impacts did not only go through income effects but also through a bargaining effect getting the job improved the bargaining power of the wife through several mechanisms which in turn added substantially to the positive impact on household consumption

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

implications of the global growth slowdown for rural poverty over the past 25 years higher growth in developing countries has contributed to a dramatic fall in global poverty although poverty rates in rural areas remain higher than in urban areas unfortunately projected growth rates have fallen in recent years this article examines the impact of this slowdown on the poor particularly the rural poor it first uses a global model to assess the impacts of lower productivity on key price and income variables it then uses microsimulation models for almost 300 000 households to assess the impacts on their real incomes although poverty rates overall are projected to fall substantially the poorest countries see the greatest slowdown in poverty reduction with over 5 of their population projected to remain below the poverty line in addition poverty rates will remain alarmingly high in many countries overall 38 million fewer people will leave extreme poverty compared to earlier projections farm households are at particular risk in middle income countries with over 1 5 more of the farming population remaining trapped in poverty than previously estimated by 2030 average extreme poverty in rural areas is projected at about 7 5 rather than 7 1 under the earlier growth projections clearly a strong focus on policies for poverty reduction will be vital for eliminating poverty by 2030

on equilibrium in resource markets with scale economies and stochastic prices abstract in this paper i show the existence and the characteristics of equilibrium in a non renewable resource market where extraction costs are non convex and market price is subject to stochastic shocks an empirically relevant setting in my model firms may be motivated to hold inventories to facilitate production smoothing which allows them to continue producing at a smooth pace at any instant when extraction ceases e g when reserves are exhausted this aspect of the model then supports a competitive equilibrium in the presence of non convex costs casual empirical evidence is provided that supports the central features of my model for a variety of non renewable resources lending credence to the explanation for equilibrium i propose

the effects of location and sectoral components of economic growth on poverty evidence from indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral composition and urban rural location using data from indonesia we find that rural services growth reduces poverty in all sectors and locations however urban services growth has the largest effect on poverty in most sectors finally we also find that rural agriculture growth strongly reduces poverty in rural areas the largest contributor to poverty in indonesia this implies that while agriculture growth in rural areas still plays a major role in reducing poverty policies that enable strong growth in the services sector in both urban and rural areas would expedite poverty reduction

harvesting a renewable resource under uncertainty abstract this paper presents a theory of harvesting that allows for partial harvests and accounts for the risk of extinction for biological assets with size dependent stochastic growth the harvesting decision is formulated as a disinvestment problem in continuous time and generalized faustmann formulas are derived the probability of extinction is then analyzed for a wide class of growth functions an illustration based on the logistic brownian motion shows that both optimal biomass at harvest and harvest size do not vary monotonically with uncertainty more generally this paper illustrates the importance of properly accounting for barriers in stochastic investment problems

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

what drives the global land rush the authors review evidence regarding the size and evolution of the land rush in the wake of the 2007 8 boom in agricultural commodity prices and authors study the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large scale agricultural investment the use of data on bilateral investment relationships to estimate gravity models of transnational land intensive investments confirms the central role of agro ecological potential as a pull factor however this finding contrasts the standard literature insofar as the quality of the destination country s business climate is insignificant and weak tenure security is associated with increased interest for investors to acquire land in the country policy implications are discussed

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

harvesting in a fishery with stochastic growth and a mean reverting price we analyze a continuous nonlinear bioeconomic model to demonstrate how stochasticity in the growth of fish stocks affects the optimal exploitation policy when prices are stochastic mean reverting and possibly harvest dependent optimal exploitation has nonlinear responses to the price signal and should be conservative at low levels of biological stochasticity and aggressive at high levels price stochasticity induces conservative exploitation with little or no biological uncertainty but has no strong effect when the biological uncertainty is larger we further observe that resource exploitation should be conservative when the price reverts slowly to the mean simulations show that in the long run both the stock level and the exploitation rate are lower than in the deterministic solution with a harvest dependent price the long run price is higher in the stochastic system the price mean reversion rate has no influence on the long run solutions

optimal capital accumulation in a fishery a nonlinear irreversible investment model abstract a nonlinear two state variable two control variable model of a fishery with irreversible investment and harvest capacity constraints is examined the model relaxes assumptions of linearity in investment costs and variable harvest profits in an earlier model by c w clark f h clarke and g r munro econometrica 47 25 47 1979 in both the linear and nonlinear models the optimal capital accumulation paths in new fisheries is characterized by a period in which the physical capital stock level exceeds its long run sustainable equilibrium however unlike the linear model periods of positive net but declining gross investment are optimal in the nonlinear model this accords with observed capital accumulation paths from a number of fisheries the paper also finds different effects in optimal harvest policy depending upon whether the linearity appears in the variable profits function or the investment cost function

sectoral growth and poverty alleviation a multiplier decomposition technique applied to south africa abstract how does an increase in a sector s output affect poverty alleviation in this paper a multiplier decomposition for a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam is used to study this linkage the decomposition applied to south africa reveals that growth in agriculture services and some manufacturing sectors can alleviate poverty for the black african population for sectoral growth to be effective however the need for appropriate skill acquisition for the poor must be addressed directly only long term policies geared towards improving both economic growth and the human capital stock of the poor can lead to significant poverty alleviation

halving global poverty the goal of central importance to this paper is to cut in half the proportion of people living below 1 a day from around 30 percent of the developing world s population in 1990 to 15 percent by 2015 based on population projections in 1990 this would correspond to around one billion people exiting poverty this paper begins by discussing poverty trends on a global scale where the poor are located in the world and how their numbers have been changing over time it then discusses the relationship of economic growth and income distribution to poverty reduction finally it suggests an evidence based agenda for poverty reduction in the developing world full text available at official url

poverty reduction during the rural urban transformation the role of the missing middle as countries develop they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize but structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega cities using cross country panel data for developing countries spanning 1980 2004 the analysis in this paper finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing middle the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty reduction than agglomeration in mega cities this suggests that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention when striving for faster poverty reduction

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

why growth is not enough household poverty dynamics in northeast gujarat india despite high growth rates in gujarat exceeding 9 per cent per year over the decade of the 1990s poverty in 36 villages located in the northeastern part of this state has changed hardly at all in these villages 9 5 per cent of households escaped from poverty over the past 25 years but 6 3 per cent of households became poor at the same time escape and descent are not symmetric different reasons account for escaping poverty than those for declining into poverty growth alone is hardly sufficient to achieve poverty reduction on any significant scale public policies will be needed to address directly the separate causes for descent into poverty

growth growth accelerations and the poor lessons from indonesia we study the impact of growth and growth accelerations on poverty and inequality in indonesia using a new panel dataset covering 26 provinces over the period 1977 132010 this dataset allows us to distinguish between mining and non mining in indonesia growth in non mining significantly reduces poverty and inequality in contrast overall growth and growth in mining appears to have no effect on the same growth acceleration in non mining reduces poverty and inequality whereas the same in mining increases poverty we expect that the degree of forward and backward linkages of mining and non mining sectors explains the asymmetric result

the evolving role of agriculture in poverty reduction an empirical perspective abstract the role of agriculture in development remains much debated this paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty as opposed to growth alone the contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth performance its indirect impact on growth in other sectors the extent to which poor people participate in the sector and the size of the sector in the overall economy bringing together these different effects using cross country econometric evidence indicates that agriculture is significantly more effective in reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor as reflected in the 1 day squared poverty gap it is also up to 3 2 times better at reducing 1 day headcount poverty in low income and resource rich countries including those in sub saharan africa at least when societies are not fundamentally unequal however when it comes to the better off poor reflected in the 2 day measure non agriculture has the edge these results are driven by the much larger participation of poorer households in growth from agriculture and the lower poverty reducing effect of non agriculture in the presence of extractive industries

the impact of growth in small commercial farm productivity on rural poverty reduction summary our core thesis is that in both low and middle income countries rapid growth in agricultural production and income among small commercial farmers is the dominant means of reducing rural poverty this effect is generated from increased expenditures from smaller commercial farmers on the poor labor intensive non tradable rural non farm sector thereby increasing incomes for the rural non farm population and reducing poverty levels we illustrate the relationship between small commercial farmers rural non farm households large commercial farmers and urban households in three contrasting situations first we analyze punjab pakistan a middle income province with a large urban sector dominance of small commercial farms in the local economy and significant land area managed by large commercial farms second we analyze sindh pakistan a middle income province with a large urban population and dominated in rural areas by large feudal holdings but with a significant small commercial farm component third we analyze data from ethiopia a low income country with a relatively small urban sector and dominated by small commercial farms in the two middle income provinces of pakistan the role that agriculture plays in income determination is much less than the urban sector but it maintains a dominant role in rural poverty determination in ethiopia the low income country agricultural growth is a dominant variable both in income growth and poverty reduction accounting for 73 of employment growth in the fast agricultural growth case large scale commercial farms show little impact of agricultural growth on poverty reduction as compared to areas dominated by small commercial farms partly because of their small proportion of total agricultural output and partly due to weak consumption based multipliers

toward a food secure future ensuring food security for sustainable human development in sub saharan africa food security remains a top development priority and global concern it is enshrined in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in sustainable development goal two food security is also a core component of the human development and capability paradigm since food access and entitlements are critical for reinforcing essential human capabilities in introducing this special issue this paper argues that agriculture is central to improving food security and reducing poverty in africa it suggests that realizing the potential of agriculture in africa requires rapid increases in land productivity and increases in agricultural yields a science based approach that integrates gender and sustainability is critical to meet this goal through the design and implementation of policies that improve the availability farm inputs and farm technology the paper concludes by introducing the papers in this special issue

beyond agriculture versus non agriculture decomposing sectoral growth poverty linkages in five african countries summary africa s development debate is often cast as agriculture versus non agriculture with agriculture s proponents arguing that agricultural growth is more effective at reducing poverty this dual economy perspective overlooks the heterogeneity within and synergies between these two broad sectors recent studies decompose agriculture into subsectors and find that agricultural growth led by smallholder farmers is even more effective at reducing poverty than larger scale estate farms in contrast few studies estimate subsectoral growth poverty linkages for non agriculture yet we strongly expect for example that growth led by informal traders or foreign owned mining companies will have quite different implications for poverty reduction different perspectives on what constitutes non agriculture might therefore explain divergent views on its relative importance for poverty reduction to address this gap in our understanding we estimate sectoral poverty growth elasticities using economy wide models for five african countries while our estimated elasticities are higher for agriculture than for non agriculture as a whole the extent to which this is true varies considerably across nonagricultural subsectors and across countries we find that the poverty growth elasticities for trade and transport services and manufacturing especially agro processing are often close to and sometimes exceed agriculture s this means that growth led by these nonagricultural subsectors might be as effective as agriculture at reaching the poor this confirms the need for a more nuanced treatment of non agriculture in africa s policy debate and may explain conflicting perspectives on agriculture s role vis a vis non agriculture

mixed fortunes a study of poverty mobility among small farm households in chile 1968 86 this study is based on a panel sample of small farm households drawn from eight rural communities in chile interviewed in 1968 and 1986 the incidence and intensity of poverty based on primary income increased over this period however after including earnings from the minimum employment programmes and public transfers both the headcount ratio and squared poverty gap fell markedly between the two surveys mobility analysis showed more households moving out of than into poverty of those households who became impoverished around half may have suffered a transitory decline in income in 1986 the other half experienced pauperisation as a result of investing in projects with negative rates of return investing in the accumulation of human capital by their children sustaining a large rise in the household s dependency ratio or suffering political discrimination in the labour market per capita income was positively related to schooling of the household head in 1968 land ownership in 1986 and living in

moving forward looking back the impact of migration and remittances on assets consumption and credit constraints in the rural philippines abstract this paper investigates the impact of migration and remittances on asset holdings consumption expenditures and credit constraint status of households in origin communities using a unique longitudinal data set from bukidnon philippines taking into account the endogeneity of the number of migrants and remittances received a larger number of migrant children reduces the values of nonland assets and total expenditures per adult equivalent however remittances have a positive impact on housing consumer durables nonland assets total expenditures per adult equivalent and educational expenditures enabling asset accumulation and investment in human capital neither migration nor remittances affects current credit constraint status