This paper proposes techniques to test for whether growth has been pro-poor. We first review different definitions of pro-poorness and argue for the use of methods that can generate results that are robust over classes of pro-poor measures and ranges of poverty lines. We then provide statistical...

Economic growth generally refers to GDP growth. The studies on the link between growth and poverty dynamic (Datt and Ravallion, 1992; Kakwani, 1997; Shorrocks, 1999) measure growth by mean household per capita expenditures. Furthermore, many countries experience at the same time economic growth and...

This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on...

The paper tests a model of trade in manufacturing products of major G7 countries for the period 1974-1990. Earlier studies demonstrated that market shares are a function of relative export prices (unit export values) and a proxy for the comparative technological advantage (share of international...

The intermediation approach considers banks’ liabilities as inputs to produce loans and other banking assets. We show that measures of banking efficiency and productivity are biased when there is an incomplete coverage of assets and liabilities. The bias can be eliminated with a complete...

International Financial Institutions have advocated the privatization of integrated agricultural monopsonies in developing countries with the hope that competition between private firms under a contract farming system would reduce inefficiencies in production and enable farmers to obtain a...

Bien qu'il soit generalement admis depuis l'article de Arrow (1962) que l'activite privee de Recherche et Developpement (R&D) peut constituer une source importantes d'effets externes, peu de chercheurs ont tente d'appercier dans quelle mesure ces externalites pouvaient influer sur la performance...

A method is proposed to provide robust poverty comparisons and robust evaluations of marginal policy reforms under income variability. Given that a household’s certainty equivalent income depends on both expected income and income variability, stochastic dominance tests are developed in order...