Cape Verde shifted from a socialist to a capitalistic model in the late 1980s. This shift enabled the population to benefit from rapid economic growth, but concerns have been expressed about a potential increase in inequality. Two household surveys with consumption data implemented in 1988–89...

Rwanda is facing a severe electricity crisis. Higher demand and production cost as well as a reduction in revenues in real terms have led to large operating losses for the electricity operator Electrogaz. In order to deal with this crisis, a doubling of electricity tariffs was recently approved,...

Even without a comprehensive household survey with detailed consumption and income data, it is still often feasible to conduct useful empirical work on gender and intra-household allocations. This paper documents the extent to which income generation affects decision making within households in...

While Mexico's southern states differ substantially in terms of their migration profile, many of the issues confronted by the three states are the same. In this paper, we focus on five questions: (a) How large are migration flows, and what can be expected in the future?; (b) To what extent does...

This article provides a simple framework to analyze the determinants of targeting performance of utility tariffs and applies it to data on electricity in Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe. While most indicators of benefit incidence are silent as of why subsidies are targeted the way...

Budget constraints faced by governments in developing countries imply that the targeting performance of public subsidies and social programs (whether the subsidies are provided in cash or in kind) is important for reducing poverty. In this paper, we analyze the distributional properties of the...

Semiparametric methods have been used to asses the impact of policies such as changes in the minimum wage on the distribution of wage earnings. While the methods are in the spirit of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, they help to differentiate impacts according to where individuals are located...

This article provides a simple framework to analyze the determinants of targeting performance of utility tariffs and applies it to data on electricity in Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe. While most indicators of benefit incidence are silent as of why subsidies are targeted the way...