While the real sector and governments (along with a few micro economists) have long recognized the core economic role that the insurance function plays, the mainstream economics profession has largely treated it as invisible background. This literature review of the relevant research, most of...

This paper explores the economic impacts of two related tracks of China's expected transformation?economic slowdown and rebalancing away from investment toward consumption?and estimates the spillovers for the rest of the world, with a special focus on Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper...

This study uses household models based on detailed expenditure and agricultural production data from 31 developing countries to assess the impacts of changes in global food prices on poverty in individual countries and for the world as a whole. The analysis finds that food price increases...

Intra-household inequalities have long been a source of concern for policy design, but there is very little evidence. The current practice of ignoring inequality within households could lead to an underestimation of both overall inequality and poverty levels, as well as to the misclassification...

This paper studies poverty as a dynamic phenomenon, motivated by the recurringeconomic crises that affect developing countries and the incidence of income fluctuationson household welfare. While the increasing availability of household panel data has beenexploited in theoretical analysis and...

The early 1990s saw the rapid introduction of policies that were to reform the centrally planned economies in CEE and FSU. These policies were expected to lead to improvements in welfare. Studies on the transition projected initial falls in inequality and increases in poverty, which are...

This paper proposes a methodology to approximate individual income distribution dynamics using only time series data on aggregate moments of the income distribution. Under the assumption that individual incomes follow a lognormal autoregressive process, this paper shows that the evolution over...

Boosting convergence and shared prosperity in the European Union achieved renewed urgency after the global financial crisis of 2008. This paper assesses the role of agriculture and the Common Agricultural Program in achieving this. The paper sheds light on the relationship between poverty and...

An extensive literature on poverty traps suggests that high levels of poverty deter growth. However, a seemingly basic implication of the underlying theoretical models, namely that countries suffering from higher levels of poverty should grow less rapidly, has remained untested. A parallel...