Does Allocation of Public Spending Matter in Poverty Reduction? Evidence from Thailand*

The present paper uses a panel dataset to estimate the marginal returns to different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in Thailand. The study finds that additional government spending on agricultural research provides the largest return in terms of agricultural productivity and has the second largest impact on rural poverty reduction. Increased investment in rural electrification has the largest poverty reduction impact, mainly through improved nonfarm employment. Rural education has the third largest impact on both productivity and poverty reduction. Irrigation has a positive impact on agricultural productivity, but regional variation is considerable. Government spending on rural roads has no significant impact on agricultural productivity and its poverty reduction impact ranks last among all investment alternatives considered. Additional investment in the Northeast Region has a greater impact on poverty reduction than in other regions.     

Oil revenues for public investment in Africa: targeting urban or rural areas?

This paper investigates the effects of oil-financed public investment on economic growth and poverty reduction using a dynamic multi-sectoral general equilibrium model featuring inter-temporal productivity spillovers. The paper shows that the relationship between resource-rent flows and real exchange rates, output growth, and poverty is less straightforward than simple models of the “resource curse” suggest. Taking Ghana as a stylized agriculture-based economy with poverty most pronounced in a region with home based agricultural production, a policy mix of smoothing the real exchange rate shock and an allocation of infrastructure spending in rural areas seems to be the most promising public investment strategy to enhance growth and reduce poverty.     

Soil and water conservation investments and rural development in China

This study uses a unique set of annual provincial data on soil and water conservation (SWC) investments during the period 1989–2005 to estimate the impact of such investments on the extent and severity of erosion, the growth rate of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) and rural poverty reduction in China. We find that SWC investments made by local governments have a significant negative impact on the extent of erosion and (in recent years) the severity of erosion, whereas SWC investments made by farm households until recently had a significant negative effect on the severity of erosion. In its turn, the severity of erosion is found to have a significant negative impact on agricultural GDP. Estimation of the impact of the extent of erosion on agricultural GDP provides mixed results. Based on these results, we derive that one RMB invested in SWC by local governments increases agricultural GDP in 2002 with 0.84–1.25 RMB. Finally, we find that agricultural GDP has a significant negative impact on the rural poverty rate. The resulting indirect effect of SWC investment on rural poverty reduction, however, is small compared to other types of public investment. We conclude that (local) government investments in SWC do not only serve environmental goals, but also make a non-negligible contribution to agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction.     

Agricultural Productivity and Economic Growth: Role of Tax Revenues and Infrastructures

To encourage economic growth in a developing economy, higher agricultural productivity has been believed to enhance the manufacturing sector's development, which provides the transition into industrialization. Although this positive linkage between agricultural productivity and economic growth has been judged to be incorrect, based upon the comparative advantage argument in a model of small-open economies by Matsuyama (1992), this article revisits the linkage by extending Matsuyama's model by introducing the revenue-generating effect, which is missing in his model. As agriculture is an important source of taxation in an early stage of economic development, higher agricultural productivity generates more tax revenues and facilitates spending on infrastructure. By introducing government taxation and infrastructure expenditure, we show that under proper conditions, higher agricultural productivity creates a positive growth effect via the revenue generation that dominates the negative growth effect through the comparative advantage. Moreover, introducing infrastructure expenditure may shift the manufacturing sector's original comparative disadvantage into comparative advantage, thereby enabling a trapped economy to take off and eventually industrialize. From the early stages of economic development in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, we can quantitatively assess an obvious net positive effect of agricultural productivity upon labor allocation and economic growth.     

新农村建设中公共支出问题探讨

公共支出是政府职能行为的成本,反映了政府的政策选择。由于历史原因,现阶段“三农”问题带来的社会矛盾依然突出,在这样的背景下建设新农村,公共支出是最直接、最有效的方式。扩大财政对农村和农业的支出规模,优化公共支出的结构,是解决好“三农”问题,促进新农村建设的重要保证。文章就新农村建设中扩大财政支农规模的必要性及可行性进行了相关分析,并提出了公共支出在新农村建设中的着力点。     

What Do OECD Countries Cut First When Faced with Fiscal Adjustments?

Following the present scale of fiscal imbalances in developed countries, significant fiscal consolidation will be inevitable in the coming years. Fiscal discipline will require cuts in government expenditure, leading to trade‐offs between different components of government expenditure. In this article, we explore the relationship between components of government expenditure and government size during the period 1970‐2007 for a sample of 25 developed countries to shed light on how fiscal discipline might influence public spending composition in the coming years. Using the Pooled Mean Group estimation we find that fiscal adjustments protect functions that have both a social and productive character, such as education and health spending. In addition, the most productive spending, that related to transport and communications, is also isolated from budgetary cuts. This result shows evidence of governments reacting to the voter's increasing realization that reducing productive expenditures harms long‐term economic growth by striking a balance between utility and economic‐growth‐enhancing expenditure.     

Sri Lanka’s Rural Non-Farm Economy: Removing Constraints to Pro-Poor Growth

We use a survey of rural enterprises from Sri Lanka to explore characteristics of the informal non-farm sector and identify obstacles to its expansion and productivity. Value added in this sector amounts to 80% of agricultural GDP participating households’ incomes are significantly higher than those of households who do not participate. Barriers to entry are low and the impact of non-farm development on inequality modest, implying a large potential contribution to growth and poverty reduction. Infrastructure constraints negatively affect new startups, investment in, and productivity of existing enterprises, with small enterprises being particularly affected.     

地方财政支出与经济增长关系的实证研究——以深圳市为例

本文着重分析了改革开放后深圳市政府财政支出与经济增长的关系,发现经济增长促进了政府财政支出规模的扩张。根据各项支出对经济增长的影响,本文划分了生产性支出和非生产性支出两大类别,并利用VAR模型和脉冲响应检验了生产性财政支出冲击与非生产性财政支出冲击对经济增长的影响。通过了解这种影响模式,将为判断2010年深圳市大运会后经济增长趋向提供一种思路。     

Government spending and the distribution of economic growth

In the United States, total government spending, and especially government social spending, has increased greatly over the last 50 years. What effect this has had on economic growth is a subject of intense debate among politicians, policymakers, and economists. However, there has been less attention paid to the distributional effects of government spending even though economic inequality has grown greatly over the last generation and much social spending is at least indirectly intended to reduce inequality. The effects of government social spending in the United States on growth in family income at deciles of the income distribution were estimated. The results suggested that social spending but not non‐social spending was likely to increase growth in family income per capita measured over 10‐year intervals. The largest effects of social spending were for deciles below the median income. At no point in the distribution does social spending have a negative effect.     

Impact of public research and development and extension on agricultural productivity in China from 1990 to 2013

Agricultural research and extension are two main policy tools that governments can use to generate agricultural growth and transformation. China has made major investments in agricultural research and extension such that it achieved the largest research and extension systems worldwide. This study examined the contribution of public agricultural research and extension to provincial agricultural productivity in China from 1990 to 2013 and estimated the social rate of return on these investments. Employing different lag distribution structures (e.g., trapezoid, gamma, and polynomial) for public agricultural research and extension in the regression analyses, this study found that public agricultural research and development, public extension, and farmers' education have made major contributions to agricultural productivity growth in China. On average, the real rate of return to public investment in agricultural research and development was around 50%, and agricultural extension was 29%. Returns to public research ranged from 24% to 76% and the extension, from 11% to 52% across different provinces.     

Managing Future Oil Revenues in Ghana: An Assessment of Alternative Allocation Options*

Abstract: Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of resource booms often concentrate on the short‐run Dutch disease effects of public expenditure, ignoring the possible long‐term effects of alternative revenue‐allocation options and the supply‐side impact of royalty‐financed public investments. In a simple model applied here, the government decides the level and timing of resource‐rent spending. This model also considers productivity spillovers over time, which may exhibit a sector bias toward domestic production or exports. A dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model is used to simulate the effect of temporary oil revenue inflows to Ghana. The simulations show that beyond the short‐run Dutch disease effects, the relationship between windfall profits, growth, and households’ welfare is less straightforward than what the simple model of the ‘resource curse’ suggests. The DCGE model results suggest that designing a rule that allocates oil revenues to both productivity‐enhancing investments and an oil fund is crucial to achieving shared growth and macroeconomic stability.     

农村公共服务满意度与优先序的实证分析——基于陕西省农户层面的实地调研

文章选取陕西省关中和陕北地区的32个乡（镇）67个自然村作为样本,基于实地调研数据,采用描述性统计分析方法。对农村公共服务满意度和优先序问题进行了抽样调查和分析。研究表明,农民对饮水设施的满意度最高,其次是农村道路,农民对农村文化娱乐服务的满意度最低;国家及各级政府部门今后供给公共服务的优先序依次是教育、水利、道路、农业科技推广与培训、文化娱乐等,但不同地区、不同经济发展水平下,农民对农村公共服务需求优先序存在显著差异。     

Poverty and Inequality Maps in Rural Vietnam: An Application of Small Area Estimation

The objective of the present paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, estimates at the regional, provincial and district level are produced, and both expenditure and income based measures are considered. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999–2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. The poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999–2006 tended to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates.     

收入差距、社会保障支出与农村居民幸福感

收入差距的日益恶化严重影响到了居民的幸福感,社会保障支出作为民生性支出,具有典型的福利性与公平性特征,其可能加剧或缓解收入差距对农村居民幸福感的影响。本文基于2010年中国社会综合调查数据（CGSS）,采用Ordered Probit模型,实证分析了收入差距、社会保障支出对农村居民幸福感的影响。研究发现,收入差距与农村居民幸福感呈倒“U”型关系,低水平的收入差距对农村居民幸福感有积极影响,而较高的收入差距则会降低农村居民幸福感,且这一效应对农村低收入者幸福感的影响更大;社会保障支出不仅对农村居民幸福感有显著的正向影响,而且缓解了收入差距过大对农村居民幸福感带来的不利冲击。在采用工具变量法矫正内生性后,结论依然稳健。因此,我国政府理应将收入差距控制在合理区间,同时加大社会保障支出,从而使农村居民更幸福感。     

Impact of Agricultural Research and Extension on crop productivity in Pakistan: A production function approach

This study analyzes the contribution that agricultural research and extension made to crop productivity in Pakistan from 1955 to 1981. Using a production function approach, it estimates the (marginal) internal rate of return to these activities. The estimated rate of around 36% is in the range reported for other countries. Considering this high rate of return and the low public spending on agricultural research and extension in Pakistan, the obvious policy recommendation is to allocate more and higher quality resources to these activities to facilitate a rapid increase in agricultural productivity.     

Economic growth,inequality, and poverty in Vietnam

This study examines how poverty reduction has been associated with economic growth and inequality in Vietnam. It finds that although the speed of poverty reduction was lower in the 2000s than in the 1990s, economic growth was more pro‐poor in the latter period. During the 1993–98 period, expenditure inequality increased and the poverty reduction during this period was mainly caused by economic growth. During the 2004–08 period, however, expenditure inequality decreased, thereby contributing to poverty reduction. The poverty incidence declined by around 5 percentage points, of which expenditure growth and redistribution contributed 2.8 and 2.2 percentage points of poverty reduction, respectively.     

Public spending and economic growth: evidence from Ghana (1970–2004)

Governments undertake expenditures to pursue a variety of objectives, one of which is economic growth. This paper examines aggregated and disaggregated expenditure on economic growth in Ghana over the period 1970–2004. Expenditure on education and health represents human capital development, while expenditure on roads and waterways captures infrastructure development. The study reveals that the aggregated government expenditure retarded economic growth. The study's findings show that expenditures on health and infrastructure promote economic growth, while those on education had no significant impact in the short run. In addition, the political economy variables?namely the nature of governance (democracy) and political instability (years of changes in government and military dictatorship)?proved significant in explaining Ghana's economic growth over the study period.     

Access to savings and household welfare evidence from a household survey in The Gambia

In this study, we provide evidence on the impact of access to formal savings on household well‐being in The Gambia. Specifically, we study how access to formal savings can impact household outcomes such as total spending, ownership of durable assets, health spending, and education spending. Using a representative household survey and kernel ridge regression method, we find that household access to formal savings has a positive and statistically significant impact on all outcomes except health spending. Furthermore, we find that the largest effect size of access to savings is on education spending. However, the impact estimates on education and food expenditure are not very robust to a mild presence of hidden bias. Overall, we find a robust impact for total spending and asset ownership. Hence, increasing household access to formal savings can improve household well‐being in The Gambia.     

Agricultural Technology, Crop Income, and Poverty Alleviation in Uganda

This paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural Uganda. The study utilizes cross-sectional data of 927 households, collected in 2006, from seven districts in Uganda. Using propensity score matching methods, we find that adopting improved groundnut varieties (technology) significantly increases crop income and reduces poverty. The positive and significant impact on crop income is consistent with the perceived role of new agricultural technologies in reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income. This study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges. Reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts, access to seeds and market outlets that simulate adoption.     

基于经济增长的新疆减贫效果趋势分析

经济增长和减贫一直是发展中国家和地区制定发展战略所考虑的重点。改革开放初期,新疆通过经济增长极大地降低了农村贫困,经济增长的减贫效果显著;20世纪80年代中后期至2010年,由于经济增长的质量下降和收入不平等程度增加,减贫趋势变缓;2011年以后,随着援疆工作和民生工程的不断推进,高速的经济增长和对贫困人口有利的收入分配对减贫起到了良好的效果,经济增长出现了益贫性特征。纵观改革开放至今,新疆减贫成就的主要原因是经济持续的高速增长、人力资本的明显改善和政府采取的反贫困行动;而其减贫趋势放缓的原因是农村经济增长质量的下降和农村收入分配的不断恶化。为此,本文认为新时期扶贫工作中,新疆应实施益贫式增长战略。从生产领域着手,在增加就业的同时通过增加穷人的资产基础以提高穷人的自我发展能力,而政府在打造民生工程时应注重市场机制,以保持减贫的可持续性。