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Estimating future demand for food is a critical aspect of global food security analyses. The process linking dietary changes to wealth is known as the nutrition transition and presents well-identified features that help to predict consumption changes in poor countries. This study proposes to represent the nutrition transition with a nonhomothetic, flexible-in-income, demand system, known as the Modified Implicitly Directly Additive Demand System (MAIDADS). The resulting model is transparent and estimated statistically based on cross-sectional information from FAOSTAT the statistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It captures the main features of the ...
This book provides an accessible, undergraduate-level introduction to computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, a class of model that has come to play an important role in government policy decisions. The book uses a graphical approach to explain the economic theory that underlies a CGE model, and provides results from simple, small-scale CGE models to illustrate the links between theory and model outcomes. The book includes eleven guided, hands-on exercises that introduce modeling techniques that are applied to real-world economic problems. Students will learn how to integrate their separate fields of economic study into a comprehensive, general equilibrium perspective as they develop their skills as producers or consumers of CGE-based analysis.
This study investigates the consequences of poor implementation in public workfare programs, focusing on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in India. Using nationally representative data, we test empirically for a discouraged worker effect arising from either of two mechanisms: administrative rationing of jobs among those who seek work and delays in wage payments. We find strong evidence at the household and district levels that administrative rationing discourages subsequent demand for work. Delayed wage payments seem to matter significantly during rainfall shocks. We find further that rationing is strongly associated with indicators of implementation ability such as staff capacity. Politics appears to play only a limited role. The findings suggest that assessments of the relevance of public programs over their lifecycle need to factor in implementation quality.
Located at the heart of West Africa, Niger is a landlocked country with three-quarters of its territory covered by the Sahara Desert. Niger’s climate is mostly arid, and it is one of the least developed countries in the world. The vast majority of its population lives in rural areas, and the country is strongly dependent on agriculture. Agriculture is predominantly rainfed and yields rely on one rainy season. Although productivity in Niger has shown a positive trend, agriculture has been strongly affected in recent decades by several crises partly or entirely due to extreme weather events. Farmers pursue a number of strategies in the face of climatic (and nonclimatic) stressors including s...
The purpose of this report is to provide information and analysis to government, civil society, and donors interested in improving the well-being of the rural population of Mon State, Myanmar. Specifically, the report analyzes the different sources of income for rural households, as well as their socioeconomic characteristics, with a view to helping identify constraints on growth and potential pathways to improving incomes. The overall picture that emerges is one of a struggling agricultural sector and an economy heavily dependent on services for local employment and on international migration for income. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,632 rural households, designed to be representative of rural households in Mon State as a whole. The survey included a household questionnaire and a community survey, and gathered information on demographics, all economic aspects of the household, and access to infrastructure and services at the community level.
The 2022 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, a flagship publication of AKADEMIYA2063 and the International Food Policy Research Institute, provides an overview of trade in agriculture in Africa, including analysis of short- and long-term trends and drivers behind Africa’s global trade, intra-African trade, and trade within Africa’s regional economic communities. The 2022 report looks at the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war; Africa’s participation in global value chains; intraregional trade in processed agricultural products; the potential benefits of ambitious implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, and includes focused chapters on value chains for cocoa, coffee, and tea and on trade integration in Economic Community of Central African States.
The paper uses a food systems approach to analyze the bidirectional relationships between climate change and food and nutrition along the entire food value chain. It then identifies adaptation and mitigation interventions for each step of the food value chain to move toward a more climate-smart, nutrition-sensitive food system. The study focuses on poor rural farmers, a population especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change on nutrition, although we recognize that there are other vulnerable populations, including urban poor and rural populations working outside of agriculture. Although this report does not explicitly exclude overweight and obesity, it focuses primarily on undernutrition because this nutritional status is currently more prevalent than overnutrition among our target population.
This is an open access book. Crafted for both the economist and the curious mind, this book introduces a novel approach to blending economic and biophysical sciences to enable multi-scale analysis of a range of sustainability challenges confronting the world's land and water resources at both local and global scales. It focuses specifically on the interface between the environment and food systems, utilizing economic theory to structure the overall framework. However, within the SIMPLE-G framework, there is ample room to incorporate fine-scale biophysical knowledge from agronomy, climate science, ecology, geography, hydrology, as well as a range of socioeconomic considerations. This enables ...
The high level of inequality in China has been a focus of interest for policy makers and researchers. However, few studies have evaluated the trend since 2010. With changes in the economic structure and new policy tools introduced in recent years, a revisit of Chinese inequality should give us the latest information about its evolution and the impacts of these economic and policy changes on income distribution. This paper argues that after a quarter century of sharp and sustained increase, Chinese inequality is now plateauing and even turning down. The argument is made using a range of data sources and a range of measures and perspectives on inequality. The evolution of inequality is further examined through decomposition by income source and population subgroup. Some preliminary explanations are provided for these trends in terms of shifts in policy and the structural transformation of the Chinese economy. The narrative on Chinese inequality now needs to focus on the reasons for this great turnaround.