The attached Joint Staff Assessment (JSA) of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) on Djibouti reviews poverty reduction objectives and strategies. The authorities invested considerable effort in building national ownership of the PRSP by strengthening the institutional framework. The...

Following the adoption by the international community of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach, which provides the basis for concessional lending by the multilateral institutions, there has been a resurgence of interest in the poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) of different...

We define the plutocratic bias as the difference between inflation measured according to the current official CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 percent per year. However,...

Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. In this paper we undertake a novel sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices in estimating global poverty. We measure global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric...

This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of life-cycle and dynastic saving behavior for closed and small, open economies. Using an extended version of Blanchard’s overlapping agents model, the analytical framework nests these two competing views, treating agents as either dynastic...

The impact of higher petroleum prices on the aggregate price level, real growth, and income distribution is appraised within a multisector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. A reduction in the government subsidy raises petroleum prices and production costs throughout the economy....

The objective of this paper is to present some early experiences of poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) from the PRGF-supported programs in the African Department. The paper illustrates that many staff country reports have taken a first step toward PSIA by making more explicit the links...

This paper assesses the distributional impact of the recent VAT reform in the Philippines and evaluates alternative methods to mitigate the effects of the reform on poor households. The reform was progressive and relatively well targeted. To alleviate the impact of the reform on the poor,...

This paper uses Engel curves to estimate real income growth in Brazil. The estimated per capita household real income growth in metropolitan areas during 1987-2002 is about 4½ percent per year, well above the "headline" growth of 1½ percent obtained by deflating nominal incomes by the CPI....

This paper reviews the Latin American experience with the implementation of 1993 SNAand the updating of the national accounts' base year. It also makes a preliminary assessment of the possible estimation biases in nominal GDP estimates stemming from the use of outdated national accounts base...