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 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...

Economic development necessarily changes the welfare of socioeconomic groups to various degrees, depending on differences in their social arrangements. The challenge for policymakers is to select the changes that will be most socially desirable. The author demonstrates the usefulness of...

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 show how to identify socially desirable options for commodity taxation in the context...

The Poverty Analysis Macroeconomic Simulator (PAMS) is a model that links standard household surveys with macro frameworks. It allows users to assess the effect of macroeconomic policies-in particular, those associated with Poverty Reduction Strategies papers-on sectoral employment and income,...

Who benefits from public spending? Who bears the burden of taxation? How desirable is the distribution of net benefits from the operation of a tax-benefit system? This paper surveys basic concepts, methods, and modeling approaches commonly used to address these issues in the context of fiscal...