Poverty, voracity, and growth

This article investigates economic performance when enforceable property rights are missing and basic needs matter for consumption. It suggests a new view of the so-called voracity effect according to which windfall gains in productivity induce behavior that leads to lower economic growth. Taking into account that the rate of intertemporal substitution in consumption depends on the level of consumption, it is shown that “voracious behavior” is situation-specific. It occurs when an economy is in decline and sufficiently close to stagnation.     

Poverty,inequality and growth in Albania

This article studies the distribution of well‐being and, specifically, the degree of poverty and deprivation in Albania, in the years 2002 and 2005, using Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS). The distribution analysis is performed by applying both one‐dimensional and multidimensional approaches, in particular to better examine the link between economic growth, inequality and poverty in Albania. Furthermore, by estimating a non‐monetary indicator, as proposed by Bossert et al. ( 2007 ), and a nonlinear principal component model together with a probit model, the paper focuses on the multidimensional measures of poverty to address the relationship between poverty and socio‐economic factors. Our evidence shows that absolute poverty decreased from 2002 to 2005 while national relative poverty increased; economic growth reduced poverty in Albania over the observed period; and living in rural and mountain areas, being female, poorly educated and with a large family increased the probability of suffering from deprivation.     

Poverty traps and the robust political economy of development assistance

Robust political economy emphasizes the lack of benevolence and omniscience of would be reformers. In addition, we consider the effects of biased decision-making for the robustness of the policy implications. This paper examines the robustness of the policy implications of models based on coordination failures and poverty traps. In particular, we address the revival in ‘big push’ type models and its policy implications. We argue that attempts to promote economic development through ‘big push’ models lack robustness. JEL Code O1, O20, P26, P41     

Dependency traps in self‐targeting food aid programs

We present an economy of farmers where food aid is warranted due to poverty traps triggered by nonconvex production sets. We model a food‐aid intervention as a dynamic game between a food‐aid manager and the farmers in a context of asymmetrical information. The food‐aid manager is motivated by a relief objective and targets farmers suffering the poverty trap. The food‐aid manager uses a self‐targeting mechanism by providing the aid through a food wage in exchange for participation in the intervention's activities. Guided by the relief objective and targeting constraint, he fixes the food wage equal to the reservation wage of the farmers not suffering the poverty trap. Dependency traps will then happen every time there is a considerable technological and nutritional gap between farmers who are in and out of the poverty trap. When there is a gap, poor farmers earn more working for the reservation wage of the well‐off farmers than by working in their own farm. Dependency can be overcome only if the food‐aid program allows farmers to upgrade their productive technologies and catch up with those farmers who are out of the poverty trap.     

Poverty traps in a frictionless world: The effects of learning and technology assimilation

We study an endogenous growth model of technology assimilation through an adaptive learning process defining the accumulation of technological knowledge among both workers and industrial clusters. The assimilation of new technology and the arrival rate of innovations are both based on the distance from the technological frontier to the current technological development level of the country. We illustrate how, even if technological innovations become immediately available to all countries, and absent educational and institutional frictions among countries, differences in technological development levels allow for the existence of poverty traps leading to the economic stagnation of technological laggards.     

Poverty, inequality, and growth in urban China, 1986–2000

Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated cross section household survey from 1986 to 2000, this study maps the changes in income, inequality, and poverty over the fifteen-year period and investigates the determinants of poverty. We find that the increase in poverty in the 1990s is associated with the increase in the relative food price and the need to purchase items that were previously provided free or at highly subsidized prices by the state, i.e., education, housing and medical care. In addition, the increased saving rate of poor households, which is due to an increase in income uncertainty, contributes significantly to the increase in poverty measured in terms of expenditure. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 710–729.     

Foreign aid and economic growth in Cameroon

A recent study of the fixed-odds betting market on baseball games, while finding that the betting market is generally efficient, also found evidence of an underbetting on underdog teams. This article examines the evidence for this new anomaly. It corrects Woodland and Woodland's estimates of the commission, subjective win probabilities and test statistics. The efficiency null hypothesis cannot be rejected for all of their tests when revised test statistics are calculated for their sample period (however, like them, it was found that slight underdogs are underbet). It is also shown that their bias is not simply a bias involving favourites and underdogs. Whether underdogs are playing at home or away also seems to matter in their sample period. As well a positive relationship between returns and subjective probabilities was found for underdogs and favourites, a relationship suggestive of a favourite-longshot bias rather than its reverse. It is concluded that there is insufficient evidence to claim that this bias is a ‘true market inefficiency’.     

Poverty among ethnic minorities: the transition process,inequality and economic growth

This article investigates the process of reducing poverty in ethnic minority households. Using two recent Vietnam household surveys, we find that ethnic minority households are more likely to be persistently poor and less likely to be persistently non-poor than ethnic majority households. The within-group component generated by the variation in income within each ethnicity group explains more than 90% of the change in total inequality. Income redistribution plays an important role in decreasing the poverty gap and decreasing poverty severity. Different ethnic groups have different poverty patterns, which should be noted when designing policies to alleviate poverty and inequality.     

长期多维贫困、不平等与致贫因素

本文利用Alkire&Foster(2011)多维贫困测度方法和Foster(2009)的持续时间分析法,构建了长期多维贫困与平均贫困持续时间指数,以CHNS数据为样本从静态和动态双重视角分析了我国的长期多维贫困程度,并通过多层回归模型探讨了致贫的宏微观因素。研究发现:长期多维贫困指数不仅能测度家庭贫困程度,还能反映贫困家庭平均贫困持续时间;相比城市家庭,农村家庭长期多维贫困发生率更高,但随着贫困持续时间的延长,城乡贫困家庭的平均被剥夺深度出现了明显的逆转,城市贫困家庭的贫困程度相对于农村更为严重;户籍制度能解释城乡家庭长期多维贫困发生率差异的43%,且能解释城乡贫困家庭的贫困不平等程度的17%;家庭的户主特征、社会关系、人口规模与结构、户籍制度等因素对长期多维贫困发生率及不平等有显著影响。     

Liquidity traps, learning and stagnation

We examine global economic dynamics under learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. Under normal monetary and fiscal policy, the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Large pessimistic shocks to expectations can lead to deflationary spirals with falling prices and falling output. To avoid this outcome we recommend augmenting normal policies with aggressive monetary and fiscal policy that guarantee a lower bound on inflation. In contrast, policies geared toward ensuring an output lower bound are insufficient for avoiding deflationary spirals.     

International investment in a model of stochastic growth and development traps

This paper investigates the effects of financial integration in a stochastic endogenous growth model of two economies in which heterogeneous agents face fixed costs of productive investment. The removal of investment barriers may enable a poor country to escape from a state of low and unstable growth by leading to large capital inflows and by raising the number of agents who invest in productive capital. However, since the two economies are characterized by increasing returns to capital and since financial integration may lower the saving rate, it is also possible that both countries' growth prospects worsen.     

Solidarity, Transfers, and Poverty

There is abundant evidence that inter-vivos transfers are more important in low-income countries than in industrialized countries. The authors use a new specification of altruism to explain this stylized fact. Under this specification, individuals feel altruistically towards other individuals genetically related to them. However, they worry about them only when their relatives' consumption falls below a certain level. Simulation results mimic the stylized facts concerning the relation between inter-vivos transfers and income.     

不平等、贫困与全球化

反全球化人士认为,世界上的不平等和贫困状况几十年来在不断加剧,一些国际组织有时也持这种观点。然而最新研究显示,从1950年代到1990年代末这段时期,情况并没有发生变化,或者还稍有好转。一项针对近两个世纪的长期研究可以使我们更好地理解不平等与贫困的演变,从而更准确地界定二者与全球化之间的关系。     

Foreign aid,institutional quality and economic growth: Evidence from the developing world

This paper examines the effect of sectoral foreign aid and institutional quality on the economic growth of 74 developing countries from Africa, Asia and South America, and covers the period 1980–2016. We consider bilateral aid flows into three sectors, namely education, health and agriculture, and find that among the three types of aid, education aid is more effective for aid-receiving countries. The effect is conditional on the current level of institutional quality and varies substantially across regions. While education aid is more effective in South America, health aid is more effective in Asia and agricultural aid is more effective in Africa. As the level of institutional quality improves, the gap between the marginal effect of education, health and agricultural aids widen. Our findings have strong policy implication for donor countries and international aid organisations, which shows that it is more desirable to shift aid flows towards the education sector as the level of institutional quality improves.     

On poverty traps,thresholds and take-offs

Recent studies on economic growth focus on persistent inequality across countries. In this paper we study mechanisms that may give rise to such persistent inequality. We consider countries that accumulate capital in order to increase the per capita income in the long run. We show that the long-run growth dynamics of those countries can generate a twin-peak distribution of per capita income. The twin-peak distribution is caused by (1) locally increasing returns to scale and (2) capital market constraints. These two forces give rise to a twin-peaked distribution of per capita income in the long run. In our model investment decisions are separated from consumption decisions and we thus do not have to consider preferences. Empirical evidence in support of a twin-peak distribution of per capita income is provided.     

社会排斥、贫困和失业

本文主要分析了社会排斥、贫困和失业三者之间的关系,提出了社会排斥概念的三个要素：(1)相对性;(2)能动性;(3)动态性。在着重讨论了社会保障收入对社会排斥的影响以及雇主在劳动力市场上的作用之后,文章认为社会保障收入是重要的,不能取消社会保障收入项目。社会排斥不仅与失业有关,而且政府政策也可能影响社会排斥,有必要检验所有政策建议对提高社会融合的作用。