Social evaluation functions used in policy impact analysis can be viewed as real-valued functionals of the underlying outcome distributions. Influence functions may be used to identify the sources of variation in social outcomes in terms of individual or household characteristics. This paper...

This paper frames growth incidence analysis within the logic of social impact evaluation understood as an assessment of variations in individual and social outcomes attributable to shocks and policies. It uses recentered influence function (RIF) regression to link the growth incidence curve to...

The importance of distributional issues in policy making creates a need for empirical tools to assess the social impact of economic shocks and policies. This paper reviews some of the modeling approaches that are currently in use at the World Bank and other international financial institutions....

Recent economic literature on pro-poor growth measurement is drawn together, using a common analytical framework which lends itself to some significant extensions. First, a new class of pro-poorness measures is defined, to complement existing classes, with similarities and differences which are...

The difficulties faced by many developing countries in raising revenue from direct taxes have forced them to rely heavily on indirect taxes to finance development interventions. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how to identify socially desirable options for commodity taxation in the...

We use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impacts in rural Indonesia of two types of shock: a delay in monsoon onset; and a significant shortfall in rain during the 90-day post-onset period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses, we find that a delay in monsoon...