activity choice labor allocation and forest use in malawi this article examines the determinants of activity choice affecting forest use among low income households in malawi data from three villages are used to estimate a system of household labor share equations for maize production forest employment and non forest employment a system estimation approach is used to identify factors influencing the competing and synergistic livelihood strategies which households undertake at the forest margin results from constrained maximum likelihood estimation indicate heightened incentives to degrade forests when returns to forest use are high factors reducing forest pressure include favorable returns to non forest employment secondary education of the household head and wealth

can foreign aid reduce income inequality and poverty this paper s goal is to examine the effect of foreign aid on income inequality and poverty reduction for the period 1971 2002 since simple cross country regressions cannot be taken as true time series findings we focus on dynamic panel data techniques which allow accounting for potential simultaneity and heterogeneity problems we find some weak evidence that foreign aid is conducive to the improvement of the distribution of income when the quality of institutions is taken into account however this result is not robust this finding is consistent with recent empirical research on aid ineffectiveness in achieving economic growth or promoting democratic institutions

seasonal poverty in madagascar magnitude and solutions abstract seasonal reductions in food consumption pull about one million malagasy below the poverty line during the lean season there they join the nine million more who remain chronically undernourished throughout the year because the seasonality of food shortages coincides with the increased prevalence of diarrhea and other diseases during the rainy season the resulting lean season exacts a heavy toll in the form of increased rates of malnutrition and child mortality combining the results of recent field studies with a seasonal multi market model this paper measures the probable impacts of three common interventions aimed at combatting seasonal food insecurity we find the most promising interventions to be those that increase agricultural productivity of the secondary food crops such as cassava other roots and tubers and maize

european schemes for promoting renewables in liberalised markets abstract the paper describes possibilities and problems for penetration of supply systems based on renewable energy sources in liberalised markets the analysis is based on recent development in eu with different models for support of installations based on renewable energy these include feed in models with guaranteed minimum tariffs tender models for different bands of technologies and green certificates trading models with obligatory consumer quota the paper describes the market situation in selected european countries including germany the uk holland and denmark an eu directive from september 2001 has postponed the decision on a possible harmonisation of promotional models until at least 2005 in order to obtain more practical experience with the different support schemes a critical evaluation is given in this paper of the different models with proposals for a balanced development between environmental and trading concerns it is argued that too much emphasis is presently given to the side of free trade at the expense of long range planning for a sustainable energy development

inequality and the impact of growth on poverty comparative evidence for sub saharan africa abstract this study explores the extent to which inequality affects the impact of income growth on the rates of poverty changes in sub saharan africa ssa compared to non ssa based on an unbalanced panel of 86 countries over 1977 2004 for all three measures of poverty headcount gap and squared gap the impact of gdp growth on poverty reduction is a decreasing function of initial inequality the impacts are similar in direction for ssa and non ssa so that within both regions there are considerable disparities in the responsiveness of poverty to income growth depending on inequality nevertheless the income growth elasticity is substantially less for ssa implying relatively small poverty reduction response to growth

consumers in the green electricity market in finland abstract green electricity i e electricity produced from environmentally less harmful sources and marketed as such has been available to finnish households since 1998 but the demand for it has remained low in this paper we discuss the barriers identified by consumers to purchasing green electricity and contrast these with the interpretation energy sector actors give to consumer passivity the empirical material consists of thematic interviews energy policy actors often assume that consumers passivity signifies their lack of interest or low environmental consciousness this results partly from the failure to differentiate between the roles of consumer and citizen the interpretation the energy sector actors give to consumer passivity and the role they assign to consumers affect the direction of green electricity policy we argue that consumers need more information on both the environmental impact of different electricity products and in particular about the electricity supply and electricity contracts in a liberalised electricity market if they are to become active in the market

chronic poverty in the united states this paper proposes a method of measuring chronic and transitory poverty using an axiomatically sound additively decomposable index of aggregate poverty our approach is contrasted with alternative methods of measuring poverty persistence we use our method to measure chronic and transitory poverty in the united states during the 1980s and late 1970s and find that chronic poverty is a more serious problem than previously thought between the late 1970s and mid 1980s poverty not only increased it became more chronic and less transitory in nature this is true for the population as a whole and for some but not all of the subpopulations we considered the latter were defined according to race type of social unit and educational qualifications of the head of the social unit all empirical analyses are based on data from the panel study of income dynamics

could a monetary base rule have prevented the great depression abstract this paper continues an ongoing investigation of the properties of a policy rule that specifies settings of the monetary base that are designed to keep nominal gnp growing smoothly at a noninflationary rate counterfactual historical simulations for 1923 1941 are conducted with the rule and a small model of nominal gnp determination estimated with u s quarterly data with residuals fed in as estimates of the behavioral shocks that occurred the simulation results indicate that nominal gnp would have been kept reasonably close to a steady three percent path over 1923 1941 if the rule had been in effect

economic policy and the great depression in a small open economy we use a standard new keynesian model of a small open economy extended to include a government sector to investigate the great depression in australia a calibrated model with a fixed exchange rate regime similar to the gold standard does well in replicating the dynamics of output during the interwar period we then ask to what extent shocks to the economy would have been moderated by adopting modern day policies we find that if policymakers had adopted a flexible exchange rate with a taylor rule policy that output fluctuations during the great depression would have been moderated by up to 25 changes in government fiscal policy would also have moderated output fluctuations but by a slightly smaller amount overall we find that improved policy could have reduced output fluctuations by almost 50

redefining recs part 2 untangling certificates and emission markets abstract renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions markets are currently in a state of confusion regarding the treatment of renewable energy certificate recs how should emission trading schemes treat recs how can emission mitigation policies provide real incentives for renewable generation the objective of rec markets should be to promote additional renewable energy investments the author asserts that defining recs in terms of attributes especially off site attributes does not further this goal ambiguous language such as environmental attribute or environmental benefit creates confusion in the marketplace while failing to address the relevant coordination issues with renewable portfolio standard compliance markets voluntary emission offset markets or emission cap and trade markets specifically defining recs in terms of off site attributes creates a number of problems including that once an emissions cap and trade scheme is in place such definitions of a rec can become indefensible the author proposes to redefine recs in terms of on site attributes which resolves the aforementioned problems and allows compliance and voluntary renewable energy and emission markets to function without conflicts ideally environmental commodities should be homogeneous first best measures of the relevant environmental good as well as easily measured and verified the author proposes tradable environmental commodities that achieve these characteristics

monetary policy and exchange rate volatility in a small open economy we lay out a small open economy version of the calvo sticky price model and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap we use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rulebased policy regimes for the small open economy domestic inflation and cpi based taylor rules and an exchange rate peg we show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail we also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules

renewables portfolio standard a means for trade with electricity from renewable energy sources abstract this paper discusses the main support mechanisms for enhancing the deployment of renewable energies re implemented in different industrialised countries the focus is on the electricity sector where deregulation and liberalisation has led to market opening and introduction of competition in the formerly strongly regulated power market under open market conditions price regulation mechanisms in favour of renewable energies which were used by many governments to support renewables tend to be considered as being inappropriate because they lead to distortions in competition and are difficult to abolish once market participants got used to them therefore the idea of creating a demand for re instead of supporting supply is gradually spreading this paper concentrates on the renewables portfolio standard rps which is a considerably new instrument that is aimed on the demand side and has only recently entered discussion it is based on legislatively mandating a percentage share of electricity generated from renewables and proved with certificates before this new means is discussed in more detail a short overview of the existing supply side mechanism is given to point out the different approach in addition examples of some countries already having some experience with the rps are given to show the present status of implementation derived from these theoretical considerations and practical experiences the paper discusses possible impacts on market participants they depend strongly on the outline of the rps and the organisation of the electricity sector adopted as a conclusion the introduction of an rps cannot alone solve the problem of enhancing the use of re however the advantages are a higher degree of competition among generators or developers of re technology more freedom of choice concerning the options for meeting the requirement and perhaps less government expenditures also experiences with national certificate trading within the rps system could ease the way for international or at least european trading systems like the emissions trading as proposed in the kyoto protocol

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

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

land contingent poverty alleviation schemes abstract target groups for rural poverty alleviation schemes in south asia and elsewhere have often been identified in terms of their landholding class with landless or near landless households being the intended beneficiaries this paper offers a quantitative approach to the analysis and design of land contingent poverty alleviation schemes an application to bangladesh suggests that when income is generally unobserved landholding class is a good instrument for targeting poverty relief in that it is strongly correlated with the informationally feasible allocations which minimize aggregate poverty for a given budget it is however far from being a perfect instrument even under otherwise ideal conditions the maximum feasible reduction in poverty which is attainable by relying solely on land based targeting is substantially less than that attainable with perfect income information indeed the poverty alleviation impact of domestically financed and revenue neutral transfers across 10 landholding classes in rural bangladesh could also be achieved without targeting by simply giving every household a lump sum payment equivalent to 10 of mean rural income political restrictions on tax powers or errors made in administration will further reduce the gains from land contingent targeting greater impact on poverty for a given budgetary cost will require more precise targeting within landholding classes

how well do static indicators identify the chronically poor abstract we investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor we propose a normative measure of performance the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator using longitudinal household data from rural india we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income both however perform much better than other common indicators such as food share and access to land

why have urban poverty and income inequality increased so much argentina 1991 2001 abstract this article analyzes the trends in income inequality and poverty among argentine households during the nineties we assess the effect of changes in labor force participation unemployment educational levels and returns to individual characteristics on income inequality and poverty by using a microsimulation approach we found that unemployment accounts for a large part of the increase in income inequality and poverty experienced in the past decade changes in labor force participation had an equalizing effect over the whole period while changes in the returns to workers sociodemographic characteristics could be associated with a small increase in income inequality with respect to poverty unemployment affected negatively the proportion of households below the poverty line amplified the poverty gap and increased the severity of poverty in contrast changes in labor force participation are associated with a reduction in the poverty rate

the welfare cost of means testing pensioner participation in income support we estimate parametric and semi parametric binary choice models of benefit take up by british pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process these implicit costs turn out to be relatively small averaging about 3 4 per week across income support recipients using the foster greer thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13 copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

real wage rigidities and the new keynesian model most central banks perceive a trade off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output however the standard new keynesian framework implies no such trade off in that framework stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare relevant output gap in this paper we argue that this property of the new keynesian framework which we call the divine coincidence is due to a special feature of the model the absence of nontrivial real imperfections we focus on one such real imperfection namely real wage rigidities when the baseline new keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities the divine coincidence disappears and central banks indeed face a trade off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare relevant output gap we show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications but it also has appealing positive properties in particular it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation unemployment relation found in the data

great expectations and the end of the depression what ended the great depression in the united states this paper suggests that the recovery was driven by a shift in expectations this shift was triggered by president franklin delano roosevelt s fdr policy actions on the monetary policy side roosevelt abolished the gold standard and announced an explicit policy objective of inflating the price level to pre depression levels on the fiscal policy side roosevelt expanded real and deficit spending which helped make his policy objective credible the key to the recovery was the successful management of expecta tions about future policy roosevelt s rise to power is modeled as a policy regime change as in thomas sargent 1983 and peter temin and barry wigmore 1990 this paper formalizes temin and wigmore s argu ment in a repeated game setting using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model and argues that the regime change can account for the recovery in the model a regime change means the elimination of certain policy dogmas that constrain the actions of the government the regime change generates an endogenous shift in expectations due to a coordination of mon etary and fiscal policy this coordination ended the great depression by engineering a shift in expectations from contractionary i e the private sector expected future economic contrac tion and deflation to expansionary i e the public expected future economic expansion and inflation the expectation of higher future inflation lowered real interest rates thus stimulating demand while the expectation of higher future income stimulated demand by raising permanent income

a macro micro analysis of the effects of electricity reform in senegal on poverty and distribution abstract this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge macro micro model to explore the distributional effects of price reform in the electricity sector of senegal in the first part of the paper we analyse the distribution of electricity in senegal by income quintiles between 1995 and 2001 the analysis demonstrates that poor and rural households are not the main beneficiaries of the expanded network the results of the cge model show that direct price effects are weaker than general equilibrium effects on poverty and inequality moreover compensatory policies tested can help attenuate some adverse effects

budgetary rules to minimize societal poverty in a general equilibrium context abstract this paper derives budgetary rules for the allocation of an exogenously supplied budget to mutually exclusive socioeconomic groups so that the maximum reduction of poverty for society as a whole is attained budgetary rules are derived for two mechanisms of intra group benefit distribution and for the cases where the effects of economic interaction within and between groups is considered and where it is not a computer simulation of the budgetary rules on a hypothetical economy demonstrates the importance of economic interaction both to the optimal allocation of benefits and to the resulting reduction in poverty

equivalence scale relativities and the extent of inequality and poverty most inequality and poverty theory analyzes equivalent income distributions for homogeneous populations incomes are assumed to be deflated by an equivalence scale that accounts for differences in needs between households yet in practice there is no consensus about what the appropriate equivalence scale is the authors analyze how the choice of equivalence scale affects inequality and poverty measures and show that there is a systematic relationship between equivalence scale generosity and the extent of inequality and poverty they consider most of the measures in common use and provide some empirical illustrations copyright 1992 by royal economic society

hunger inequality ethics and aid abstractthis article considers the inequality in the cross country distribution of hunger using multiple ethical underpinnings under sovereign equality each nation state receives equal weighting leading to the conclusion that hunger should be concentrated in a few large countries under the democratic ethic individuals receive equal weighting and the global distribution of hungry people is irrelevant inequality aversion deliberately prefers equal levels of hunger across countries these ideals are presented in a general social welfare function and compared to the actual changes in hunger during 1991 2001 the distribution of food aid to reduce both hunger and hunger inequality are considered

the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the distribution of household welfare and poverty in rural kenya1 this study estimates the effects of a large discrete maize price increase on the welfare of a sample of rural kenyan households the usual first order welfare approximation formula is extended to a second order formula that allows for supply and demand responses to the price change results show that many rural households are not affected greatly by the price change and there are about as many gainers as losers however these full sample results mask important differences across regions welfare gains generally take place in major production areas while losses are in areas where most households are net buyers of maize semiparametric methods are used to investigate the relationship between income and the size of the welfare effect and poverty dominance techniques are applied to study the impacts of the maize price increase on rural poverty

supporting renewable energy on liberalised markets green electricity between additionality and consumer sovereignty abstract the german feed in regulation has been perhaps the most effective promotional policy for green electricity however with the growing momentum of the liberalisation process the current regulation is challenged by structural problems about how to address the demand side price regulation lefts only little room for private green electricity market activities moreover the success of the feed in regulation depends on a strict differentiation of the political segment and the emerging green electricity markets the question therefore is about the role green electricity markets can or should perform in general in order to evaluate green electricity markets the additionality criteria is frequently used implying that markets are only desirable if they lead to additional environmental effects the additionality criteria has two implications first transformed into individual behaviour additionality implies that consumers are assumed to act as pure altruists however there is evidence from empirical studies that green electricity consumers behave more as impure altruists they are not so much interested in the objective environmental impact of their behaviour but more objected to receive a private satisfaction from buying an environmental friendly product whereas theoretical models in the case of pure altruism suggest that private activities crowd out totally when policy becomes active in supporting the public good this crowding out disappears in the case of impure altruism second using end state criteria such as the additionality principle as pre condition and neglecting process criteria such as consumer sovereignty means to prevent establishing competitive market process right at the outset in principle

estimating utility consistent poverty lines with applications to egypt and mozambique abstract a fundamental premise of absolute poverty lines is that they represent the same level of utility through time and space disturbingly a series of recent studies in middle and low income economies show that even carefully derived poverty lines rarely satisfy this premise this article proposes an information theoretic approach to estimating cost of basic needs cbn poverty lines that are utility consistent applications to date illustrate that utility consistent poverty measurements derived from the proposed approach and those derived from current cbn best practices often differ substantially with the current approach tending to systematically overestimate underestimate poverty in urban rural zones

the united kingdom demand for renewable electricity in a liberalised market abstract this paper analyses how the liberalisation of the uk electricity market in 1998 may encourage demand for renewable electricity through pricing and informational incentives the analysis argues that prices and beliefs will be crucial for influencing customers willingness to pay for environmental costs associated with electricity generation as well as their decision to not just buy the cheapest electricity in 1998 when uk electricity markets are liberated a small price differential between renewable and standard electricity certainly less than 20 and clear credible and captivating information about the external costs of electricity generation could create a considerable demand for renewable electricity but because renewable generating capacity will initially be small and slow to adjust to incentives initially high demand may drive up prices discouraging customers from wanting to buy renewable electricity low demand on the other hand will not provide the incentives to invest new capacity which probably means that renewable technology will not be able to reduce its unit costs of electricity generation and compete in a liberalised market without continued financial support to avoid either scenario this paper recommends that government should extend the non fossil fuel obligation nffo to promote investment in renewable technology provide tax incentives to minimise the price differential between renewable and standard electricity encouarge non governmental organisations to develop schemes for providing customers with clear consistent and reliable information about sources of renewable electricity and stagger the introduction of electricity liberalisation while the analysis is of a speculative nature such policies may create incentives for markets to reduce environmental damage associated with electricity generation

monetary policy for an open economy an alternative framework with optimizing agents and sticky prices the new open economy macroeconomics seeks to provide an improved basis for monetary and exchange rate policy through the construction of open economy models that feature rational expectations optimizing agents and slowly adjusting prices of goods this paper promotes an alternative approach for constructing such models by treating imports not as finished consumer goods but rather as raw material inputs to the home economy s productive process this treatment leads to a clean and simple theoretical structure that has some empirical attractions as well a particular small economy model is calibrated and its properties exhibited primarily by means of impulse response functions the preferred variant is shown to feature a pattern of correlations between exchange rate changes and inflation that is more realistic than provided by a more standard specification important recent events are interpreted in light of the alternative models

on the coverage of public employment schemes for poverty alleviation abstract the cost effectiveness of public employment as a means of poverty alleviation depends on policy design choices concerning coverage and wage rates the choice is between schemes which aim for wide coverage at potentially low wages and schemes which ration participation so that more beneficiaries can escape poverty conditions are derived for ranking stylized policy alternatives in terms of a broad class of poverty measures the preferred policy is shown to depend on the budget level administrative cost the initial wage distribution and the policy maker s aversion to poverty empirical simulations for bangladesh data generally support wide coverage for distributionally sensitivity poverty measures but limited coverage for other measures

optimal non linear income taxation for the alleviation of income poverty there has been much discussion recently of structuring tax and transfer programs to ensure that resources go to the poor with minimal leaks to the nonpoor the poor have no incentive to earn income with 100 percent marginal tax rates but how high or low the marginal rate of taxation should be and how they should vary with income is a complex issue and opinions vary social security schemes that withdraw benefits represent an extremely high effective marginal tax rate other schemes call for relatively low marginal tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution which tax transfer schedule does most to reduce poverty the issue is one of optimal nonlinear income taxation the authors show that one of the key theoretical results of the welfarist literature is overturned if it is desirable for everybody to work the optimal marginal tax rate on the very poorest individuals is strictly negative they argue that the nonwelfarist perspective points toward lower marginal tax rates in the lower part of the income distribution than does the welfarist perspective but numerical simulations suggest that the effect is of limited quantitative significance using conventional functional forms and parameter values optimal marginal tax rates on the poor are in the 60 70 percent range

exploring seasonal poverty traps the six week window in southern malawi conventional wisdom in malawi holds that seasonal food deficits force smallholders to hire out their labour to buy food during the critical first six weeks after planting thereby reducing maize yields on their own fields and reinforcing poverty this model was tested empirically for the blantyre shire highlands using evidence from a panel survey and household case studies results showed no significant relationship between the supply of hired labour ganyu and the timeliness of weeding for maize and that timely weeding was not a significant determinant of household maize deficits this puzzle is explained by the diversification of the rural economy that has allowed households to develop alternative livelihood strategies to cope with maize deficits livelihood diversity helped poor households avoid the seasonal poverty trap and also helps explain the paradox of why the poorest region in malawi escaped the 2001 2002 famine

poverty and basic needs fulfilment in africa during structural change evidence from cote d ivoire abstract much attention is given in the literature to the evolution of social indicators during periods of structural adjustment and economic reform this paper argues that these processes are not distribution neutral from the point of view of basic needs fulfilment and that hence the focus should not be on aggregate indicators but on the distribution of beneficiaries of social services and changes in this distribution evidence is presented for cote d ivoire during the second half of the 1980s a period of intense structural change which shows that the poorest absorbed the bulk of the decline in basic needs fulfilment as a result of structural change this was the case for almost all aspects of basic needs and occurred regardless of the overall trend in the social indicators

does child undernutrition persist despite poverty reduction in developing countries quantile regression results abstract the eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions but not always at the same rate using quantile regression we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity in contrast while the prevalence of child wasting declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread the elasticity becomes smaller as wasting becomes less prevalent this finding suggests a greater need for increasingly targeted interventions to achieve a given reduction in undernutrition as its prevalence declines

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

renewable energy policy and electricity restructuring a california case study abstract many countries are in the process of deregulating and restructuring their electric power industries although the introduction of retail competition may have negative impacts on the development of renewable energy a number of countries are establishing new programs to support these clean energy technologies in the united states debate has centered on three primary renewables support mechanisms 1 the renewables portfolio standard 2 programs funded by an electricity distribution surcharge and 3 voluntary renewable energy purchases by electricity customers via green power marketing california provides a good case study of the design of renewables support programs within industry restructuring because policymakers considered all three of these options during the state s restructuring proceedings moreover many of the same policy options design issues and political conflicts that have arisen in california are likely to recur in other states and countries some of the most important lessons from the california experience include 1 renewable energy and environmental advocates must clearly articulate the need and rationale for continued support of renewables 2 cost containment and competitive neutrality concerns must be addressed head on 3 combinations of policies are likely to be far more effective than any single renewables policy and 4 the effectiveness of renewable energy policies developed during the restructuring process will be strongly linked to their duration and stability

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

micro level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity evidence from rural malawi this article analyses the micro level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity using a two wave nationally representative panel data from rural malawi welfare is measured by various dimension

the renewable energy policy paradox abstract one major avenue for policymakers to meet climate targets is by decarbonizing the power sector one component of which is raising the share of renewable energy sources renewables in electricity generation however promoting renewables in liberalized power markets creates a paradox in that successful penetration of renewables could fall victim to its own success with the current market architecture future deployment of renewable energy will necessarily be more costly and less scalable moreover transition towards a full 100 renewable electricity sector is unattainable paradoxically in order for renewable technologies to continue growing their market share they need to co exist with fossil fuel technologies ignoring these findings can slow adoption and increase the costs of deploying new renewable technologies this paper spots the incompatibility between electricity liberalization and renewable policy regardless of the country location or renewable technologies the paradox holds as long as market clear prices with short term marginal costs and renewable technology s marginal cost is close to zero and not dispatchable

dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade the j curve the authors provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in terms of trade but positively correlated with past movements they document the same properties in a two country stochastic growth model in which trade fluctuations reflect in large part the dynamics of capital formation the authors find that their general equilibrium perspective is essential the relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade depends critically on the source of fluctuations copyright 1994 by american economic association

concepts of poverty and the poverty line abstract various approaches adopted in developed economies to distinguishing between the poor and non poor to setting a poverty line are reviewed these include the budget standard food ratio official subjective and relative poverty line methods as well as the analysis of indicators of deprivation there has been significant progress in recent years in the degree of sophistication involved and a movement away from approaches with a quasi absolute background however all the methods face formidable problems at conceptual and empirical levels and no single approach is likely to dominate

can income programs reduce tropical forest pressure income shocks and forest use in malawi summary seasonal household data from malawi are used to study links between income shocks and forest use a tobit model is estimated to examine whether household forest use responds to receipt of a positive income shock delivered as a technology assistance package and the characteristics of households reliant on forests for shock coping results show households experiencing an income boost had lower forest extraction compared to households that did not receive such a shock ceteris paribus we find households most dependent on forests for natural insurance are those located near woodlands and headed by an individual who is relatively young and male 2005 published by elsevier ltd

the effect of transfers on household expenditure patterns and poverty in south africa abstract this paper uses household level unit record data from south africa to examine the behavioural and welfare impacts of private and public transfers we allow for joint endogeneity of resource variables and the expenditure shares our results show that crowding out of private transfers as a result of the introduction of public pensions holds only for poor households and not for the non poor both private transfers and public pensions significantly reduce poverty but private transfers have a larger impact on expenditure patterns the results also reject the hypothesis of income pooling underlying the conventional unitary model by finding that the marginal impact on expenditures are different for public pension received private transfer received and other resources flowing into the household the principal conclusions are robust to changes in specification

a note on pro poor growth this paper proposes a poverty growth curve that measures whether economic growth is pro poor or not propoor our methodology is developed based on atkinson s theorem linking the generalized lorenz curve and changes in poverty this methodology is applied to both thailand s unit record household surveys and international cross country data empirical study illustrates that our approach to measuring pro poor growth provides conclusive results in the majority of cases d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

did sunspot forces cause the great depression abstract we apply a dynamic general equilibrium model to the period of the u s great depression in particular we examine a modification of the real business cycle model in which the possibility of indeterminacy of equilibria arises in other words agents self fulfilling expectations can serve as a primary impulse behind fluctuations we find that the model driven only by these measured sunspot shocks can explain well the entire depression era that is the decline from 1929 to 1932 the subsequent slow recovery and the recession that occurred in 1937 1938

poverty and inequality in java examining the impact of the changing age educational and industrial structure abstract this paper uses the method of dinardo et al dinardo j fortin n m lemieux t 1996 labor market institutions and the distribution of wages 1973 1992 a semiparametric approach econometrica 64 5 sept 1001 1044 to examine the distribution of the benefits of growth in java dinardo et al s method presents the decompositions visually rather than in the form of opaque summary statistics in this paper it was modified so that changes in the cumulative distribution functions lorenz curves and generalized lorenz curves are decomposed the change in the distribution of per capita income between 1984 and 1990 is related to the aging of the population decreased reliance on agriculture increased educational attainment and changes in incomes within industry and age education categories

the impact of coffee certification on small scale producers livelihoods a case study from the jimma zone ethiopia what is the impact of product certification on small scale farmers livelihoods to what extent does the participation of ethiopian small scale coffee farmers in certified local cooperative structures improve their socioeconomic situation to answer these questions this article employs household data of 249 coffee farmers from six different cooperatives collected in the jimma zone of southwestern ethiopia in 2009 findings show that the certification of coffee cooperatives has in total a low impact on small scale coffee producers livelihoods mainly due to 1 low productivity 2 insignificant price premium and 3 poor access to credit and information from the cooperative differences in production and organizational capacities between the local cooperatives are mirrored in the extent of the certification benefits for the smallholders good cooperatives have reaped the benefits of certification whereas bad ones did not fare well in this regard the cooperative effect overlies the certification effect

the determinants of poverty in malawi 1998 abstract poverty reduction efforts aim at changing those household characteristics that are judged important determinants of household welfare and poverty status we model the determinants of poverty for malawian households by conducting an empirical multivariate analysis of household welfare primarily using data from the 1997 98 malawi integrated household survey using this model to simulate the effects of changes in key household characteristics we are able to assess the likely impact on poverty of a number of poverty reduction policy interventions the simulations show that higher levels of educational attainment especially for women and the reallocation of household labor away from agriculture and into the trade and services sector of the economy will prove effective in reducing poverty in malawi

responding to policy change new business models for renewable energy cooperatives barriers perceived by cooperatives members abstract renewable energy cooperatives recs in germany have received considerable attention in recent years their number having risen to nearly a thousand since 2004 this growth has resulted largely from germany s feed in tariff system recent changes in this policy however have made the previous rec business models mostly unprofitable so recs are looking for new business models our study aims at identifying those new models and characterizing the implementation barriers recs face to this end we interviewed rec members and management and observed rec annual general meetings we found three significant barriers first risk aversion on the part of both members and management second concerns about the environmental impacts or the ethics of certain models that while legal are not felt to align with the intentions of lawmakers finally the lack of competencies and time of the mostly unsalaried rec management these barriers could put the future of recs at risk and so threaten the contributions recs make to the german energy transition professionalization partnerships and other strategies can help mitigate this risk if recs are to continue to play an important role in the energy transition policy makers would be wise to consider measures to support their continued growth

financing public goods public goods can be financed by direct taxation or a subsidy to private spending this paper examines the relative efficiency and distributional consequences of the two methods efficiency is shown to depend on the price elasticity of private spending and the trade off between public and private spending when this trade off is dollar for dollar however a subsidy is always more efficient than direct taxation the gains from a subsidy are larger for a mixed good than for a pure public good looking a t distributional effects the author shows when richer taxpayers may prefer a tax credit to deductibility even though they face lower prices with deductibility and also shows when richer taxpayers prefer direct taxation to either type of subsidy copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

why have some indian states done better than others at reducing rural poverty the unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of india since the 1950s allowed the authors to study the causes of poverty they modeled the evolution of average consumption and various poverty measures using pooled state level data for 1957 91 they found that poverty was reduced by higher agricultural yields above trend growth in nonfarm output and lower inflation rates but these factors only partly explain relative success and failure in reducing poverty initial conditions also mattered states that started the period with better infrastructure and human resources with more intense irrigation greater literacy and lower infant mortality rates had significantly greater long term rates of consumption growth and poverty reduction by and large the same variables that promoted growth in average consumption also helped reduce poverty the effects on poverty measures were partly redistributive in nature after controlling for inflation the authors found that some of the factors that helped reduce absolute poverty also improved distribution and none of the factors that reduced absolute poverty had adverse impacts on distribution in other words there was no sign of tradeoffs between growth and pro poor distribution

poverty transition and persistence in ethiopia 1994 2004 summary this study analyzes the persistence of poverty in both rural and urban areas in ethiopia during 1994 2004 the key finding is that households move frequently in and out of poverty but the difficulty of exiting from poverty like the chance of avoiding slipping back increases with the time spent in that state and varies considerably between male and female headed households our results imply that it is important to design anti poverty policies both to hinder households from slipping into extreme poverty and to minimize the length of the poverty spell for households once they have fallen into it

one kind of freedom poverty dynamics in post apartheid south africa abstract a 1993 south african living standards survey documented the legacy of apartheid in the form high levels of inequality and human insecurity drawing on a 1998 re survey of households in the 1993 study this paper explores whether this legacy has been superseded or whether apartheid s end has been only one kind of freedom that has left households in a poverty trap from which they cannot escape after proposing a theoretically grounded dynamic poverty typology that distinguishes stochastic from structural poverty transitions the paper goes on to estimate that significant numbers of the south african poor are potentially trapped in a structural poverty trap and lack the means to escape poverty over time

measuring welfare poverty and inequality a class of poverty measures is identified the members of which satisfy strong monotonicity and transfer conditions these measures are closely related to indices of income inequality based on the notion of a mean equivalent income a restriction on the class of admissible measures allows poverty to be interpreted in terms of the loss in mean equivalent income resulting from the fact that some people are poor copyright 1987 by royal economic society

equity regarding poverty measures differences in needs and the role of equivalence scales the paper investigates the definition of equity regarding poverty measures when there are different household types in the population it demonstrates the implications of a between type regressive transfer principle for poverty measures for the choice of poverty lines and for the measurement of living standard the role of equivalence scales which are popular in empirical work on poverty measurement is clarified ce memoire examine la definition de mesures de pauvrete fondees sur l equite quand existent differents types de menages dans la population on montre les implications d un principe de transfert regressif entre types de menages pour les mesures de pauvrete pour la definition des seuils de pauvrete et pour la mesure du niveau de vie on clarifie le role des echelles d equivalence qui sont d un usage generalise dans les travaux sur la mesure de la pauvrete

food standards certification and poverty among coffee farmers in uganda summary voluntary standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high value foods we analyze and compare impacts of three sustainability oriented standards fairtrade organic and utz on the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers in uganda using survey data and propensity score matching with multiple treatments we find that fairtrade certification increases household living standards by 30 and reduces the prevalence and depth of poverty for the other two certification schemes no significant impacts are found several factors that can explain differential impacts are discussed overly general statements about the effects of sustainability standards on smallholder livelihoods may be misleading

monetary policy in a low pass through environment in a dynamic new keynesian optimizing model we introduce incomplete exchange rate pass through on import prices three results stand out first unlike canonical models with perfect pass through which emphasize a type of isomorphism incomplete pass through renders the analysis of monetary policy of an open economy fundamentally different from the one of a closed economy second productivity driven deviations from the law of one price assume the interpretation of endogenous cost push shocks third the optimal commitment policy relative to discretion entails a smoothing of the deviations from the law of one price and requires more stable nominal and real exchange rates

noncomparable poverty comparisons poverty estimates based on enumeration from a single point in time form the basis for most country level analysis of poverty cross country comparisons of poverty and global counts of the poor implicitly assume that country level poverty headcounts are comparable this paper illustrates that the assumption of comparability is potentially invalid when households are interviewed multiple times throughout the year as opposed to a single visit interview an example from jordan illustrates how the internationally comparable approach of handling data from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 per cent greater than the rate that is currently reported as the official estimate

anomalies the winner s curse abstract next time that you find yourself a little short of cash for lunch try the following experiment in your class take a jar and fill it with coins noting the total value of the coins now a