Community Targeting for Poverty Reduction in Burkina Faso.

The paper develops a method for targeting anti-poverty programs and public projects on poor communities in rural and urban areas. The method is based on the application of an extensive data-set from a large number of sources and the integration of the entire data-set in a Geographical Information System. This data-set includes data from the population census, household-level data from a variety of surveys, community-level data on the local road infrastructure, public facilities, water points, etc., and department-level data on the agro-climatic conditions. An econometric model that estimates the impact of household-, community-, and department-level variables on households’ consumption has been used to identify the key explanatory variables that determine the standard of living in rural and urban areas. This model was applied to predict poverty indicators for 3871 rural and urban communities across the country and to provide a mapping of the spatial distribution of poverty in Burkina Faso. Simulation analysis was subsequently conducted to assess the effectiveness of village-level targeting based on these predictions of the poverty indicators. The results show that village-level targeting based on these predictions provides an improvement over regional targeting by reducing the leakage of the targeted program and the percentage of the population that remains undercovered

Impact of Micro-credit on Poverty and Inequality: The Case of the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies

While the provision of subsidized loans through the VBSP forms a cornerstone of Vietnam’s antipoverty policy, little is known on the impact of these preferential loans. In this paper, we use fixed effect regression to estimate the average effect of the program on income and expenditures of participating households, and subsequently assess the impact of the program on poverty and inequality. Our estimates indicate that the VBSP was quite effective. Participation on average seemed to have increased household income and expenditures by about thirty percent of the value of the loan, and an increase in loan size would have a similar effect. Despite that only one third of loans reaches households who are actually poor, our computations indicate that the program decreased the head count of poverty for its participants by almost four percentage points. Similarly, the program decreased the poverty gap index and the poverty-severity index by almost twenty percent. The impact on Vietnam’s inequality was significant but small, which is not surprising because of the yet limited outreach of seven percent of the rural population

Impact of Micro-credit on Poverty and Inequality: The Case of the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies

While the provision of subsidized loans through the VBSP forms a cornerstone of Vietnam’s antipoverty policy, little is known on the impact of these preferential loans. In this paper, we use fixed effect regression to estimate the average effect of the program on income and expenditures of participating households, and subsequently assess the impact of the program on poverty and inequality. Our estimates indicate that the VBSP was quite effective. Participation on average seemed to have increased household income and expenditures by about thirty percent of the value of the loan, and an increase in loan size would have a similar effect. Despite that only one third of loans reaches households who are actually poor, our computations indicate that the program decreased the head count of poverty for its participants by almost four percentage points. Similarly, the program decreased the poverty gap index and the poverty-severity index by almost twenty percent. The impact on Vietnam’s inequality was significant but small, which is not surprising because of the yet limited outreach of seven percent of the rural population

Cardinal criteria for ranking uncertain prospects

The purpose of this paper is to develop criteria for comparing and ranking uncertain prospects when we have some information on the extent to which agents are risk-averse. The basis for these comparisons is the value of the certainty equivalent outcome of the corresponding uncertain prospects. Clearly, the ranking established by the values of the certainty equivalent outcome is identical to the ranking established by the expected utility of the outcome. By comparing the former values, however, we can determine not only the ranking of the uncertain prospects under consideration but we can also determined by how much one prospect would be more valuable than the other in terms of money - for that particular agent. The paper develops expressions for approximating the values of the certainty equivalent outcomes on the basis of the central moments of their distribution and the value of the underlying coefficient of variation. These criteria are then applied for comparing alternative crop rotation and irrigation practices of wheat in Israel

Approximation methods for ranking risky investment alternatives

The paper develops and illustrates the application of criteria for ranking risky investment alternatives that are based on their certainly equivalent (cE) outcomes and determines expressions for approximating the cE outcomes by means of the central moments of their distribution. The paper develops criteria on the basis of the CE outcomes for determining a complete ranking of risky investment alternatives that can represent the choice of many - though not all - risk-averse agents

The Theory of Variable Levies.

This paper develops an analytical framework for evaluating the policy of variable levies and assessing its effects on the country's trade, welfare, income distribution, b alance of payments, and fiscal budget. The analysis indicates that th e instability in domestic supply and world prices may justify certain measures of government interventions and trade restrictions; and app ropriately designed variable levies will not only insulate the econom y from the external instability, but may also raise the country's wel fare. Instability thus adds another dimension to the familiar "optim al tariff" argument. Copyright 1987 by Royal Economic Society.