Laos and Cambodia have been transitioning to a market-oriented policy regime. Both are agrarian economies with agriculture contributing about one-third of the GDP. We assess prospects of achieving MDG1 and centrality of agricultural growth in achieving this goal. As these are macro...

This paper examines whether agricultural growth through public expenditure, ODA or investment will improve significantly the prospects of achieving MDG 1 of halving poverty in Asia and the Pacific Region. As more than a few countries in this Region recorded impressive economic growth in the...

This study examines if household access to microfinance reduces poverty in Pakistan, and if so, to what extent and across which dimensions of well-being by taking account of the multi-dimensional aspect of poverty. The study draws on first-hand observations and empirical data gathered through...

The present study simulates the impacts of price surges in 2006-2008 on household poverty in the main Colombian cities. It is found that the price surges increased both extreme and moderate poverty in urban areas in short and medium terms. However, the magnitude of poverty rise is not...

The objective of our study is to identify pattern and causes of households' transitions in and out of poverty using the long household panel data on rural China in the period 1989-2009. We propose a discrete-time multi-spell duration model that not only corrects for correlated unobserved...

The paper examines the level and sources of vulnerability in rural Bangladesh using a household survey. We use a simple two-level random intercept model to estimate expected mean and variance in consumption as well as to decompose the variance into idiosyncratic and covariate components. Our...

The present study re-examines the effects of remittances on growth of GDP per capita using annual panel data for 24 Asia and Pacific countries. The results generally confirm that remittance flows have been beneficial to economic growth. However, our analysis also shows that the volatility of...

In response to the Deaton and Dreze (2009) explanation of a downward shift in the calorie Engel curve in terms of lower requirements due to health improvements and lower activity levels in India, we develop an alternative explanation embedded in a standard demand theory framework, with food...