The international community has declared poverty reduction one of the fundamental objectives of development, and therefore a metric for assessing the effectiveness of development interventions. This creates the need for a sound understanding of the fundamental factors that account for observed...

The authors use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks: (i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset period. Focusing on...

The Government of Cameroon has declared poverty reduction through strong and sustainable economic growth the central objective of its socioeconomic policy. This paper uses available household survey data to assess the performance of the economy with respect to this objective over the period...

This paper presents counterfactual decompositions based on both the Shapley method and a generalization of the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to identify proximate factors that might explain differences in the distribution of economic welfare in Cameroon in 1996-2007. In particular, the analysis uses...

The business cycle effects of bank capital regulatory regimes are examined in a New Keynesian model with credit market imperfections and a cost channel of monetary policy. Key features of the model are that bank capital increases incentives for banks to monitor borrowers, thereby reducing the...