There has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness, as one aspect of"globalization."The author views the issue through both"macro"and"micro"empirical lenses. The macro lens uses cross-country comparisons and aggregate time series data. The...

In theory, it is possible that the persistent poverty that has emerged in many transition economies, is attributable to underlying, non-convexities in the dynamics of household incomes - such that a vulnerable household will never recover from a sufficiently large, but short-lived shock to its...

The authors use China's national household surveys for rural and urban areas to measure and explain the welfare impacts of the changes in goods and factor prices attributed to WTO accession. Price changes are estimated separately using a general equilibrium model to capture both direct and...

It seems natural to expect the rich to oppose policies to redistribute income from the rich to the poor, and the poor to favor such policies. But this may be too simple a model, say the Authors. Expectations of future welfare may come into play. Well-off people on a downward trajectory may well...

The authors use Morocco's national survey of living standards to measure the short-term welfare impacts of prior estimates of the price changes attributed to various trade policy reforms for cereals-the country's main food staple. They find small impacts on mean consumption and inequality in the...

The authors argue that the welfare inferences drawn from subjective answers to questions on qualitative surveys are clouded by concerns about the structure of measurement errors and how latent psychological factors influence observed respondent characteristics. They propose a panel data model to...

Many developing countries faced macroeconomic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s. The impact of the shocks on welfare depended on the nature of the shock, on initial household and community conditions, and on policy responses. To avoid severe and lasting losses to poor and vulnerable groups,...

Cross-country comparisons of social indicators controlling for income and/or social spending have been widely used to measure and explain"social efficiency"analogously to"technical efficiency"in production. The author argues that these methods are clouded in ambiguities about what exactly is...

The author tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm-household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for non-stationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...

Theoretical work has shown that nonlinear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. If this is true, the potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient poverty would be an investment with lasting benefits,...