Decomposing Poverty Changes in Zambia: Growth,Inequality and Population Dynamics

Abstract: During the 1990s, the Zambian economy underwent major structural adjustments. This paper presents an application of a recently proposed poverty decomposition that attributes changes in poverty to income growth, changes in inequality and population dynamics. Our results confirm earlier findings that the existence of a severe urban bias in the economy effectively shielded large parts of the rural population from the economic slump caused by the structural adjustments. In addition, we find that the exodus from urban centres that followed the adjustments contributed significantly to the increase in national poverty. The latter finding highlights the importance of considering population movements when studying poverty, especially in situations where policy changes affect migrant labour, as was the case for the Zambian copper industry.     

Targeting the Exchange Rate Under Inflation*

The purpose of this paper is to implement empirically a variant of the new theory of exchange-rate targeting, suitable for high-inflation, small, open economies. We formulate an expectations-induced relationship between the exchange rate and the fundamental, subject to random shocks and target-zone constraints on rates of depreciation. the empirical analysis provides estimates for the key parameters of the exchange-rate dynamic equation, and thereby identifies the unique roles played by policy variables and market fundamentals in foreign-exchange markets.     

Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization

Quality & Quantity - Saturation has attained widespread acceptance as a methodological principle in qualitative research. It is commonly taken to indicate that, on the basis of the data that...