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2841. Pro-Poor Growth: The Asian Experience

Author:
Hyun H. Son and Nanak Kakwani
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, this study examines to what extent the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring pro-poor growth are scrutinized using a variety of criteria. It is argued that the satisfaction of a monotonicity axiom is a key criterion for measuring pro-poor growth. The monotonicity axiom sets out a condition that the proportional reduction in poverty is monotonically an increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. This paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called the 'poverty equivalent growth rate', which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of the growth are distributed to the poor and the non-poor. As the new measure satisfies the criterion of monotonicity, it is indicative that to achieve a rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate ought to be maximized rather than the actual growth rate. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Asia, Vietnam, Korea, and Thailand

2842. The Corporate Debt Market: A Firm-Level Panel Study for India

Author:
Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Saibal Kar
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Traditionally, firms in India have shown a low preference towards debt financing, despite its advantages. Using panel data from 450 firms during 1992-93 and 2003-04, we attempt to identify factors which could explain the pattern of financing of manufacturing firms in India and the key determinants of their debt structure. We examine the roles of age of the firm, long term borrowing and net sales in affecting its debt structure.
Topic:
Economics and Markets
Political Geography:
India and Asia

2843. Development Strategy, Viability, and Economic Institutions: The Case of China

Author:
Mingxing Liu, Pengfei Zhang, Shiyuan Pan, and Justin Yifu Lin
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores the politically determined development objectives and the intrinsic logic of government intervention policies in east developed countries. It is argued that the distorted institutional structure in China and in many least developed countries, after the Second World War, can be largely explained by government adoption of inappropriate development strategies. Motivated by nation building, most least-developed countries, including the socialist countries, adopted a comparative advantage defying strategy to accelerate the growth of capital-intensive, advanced sectors in their countries. In the paper we also statistically measure the evolution of government development strategies and the economic institutions in China from 1950s to 1980s to show the co-existence and coevolution of government adoption of comparative advantage defying strategy and the trinity system.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2844. Trade Liberalization, Environment and Poverty: A Developing Country Perspective

Author:
M.S. Quresh
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper revisits the pollution haven hypothesis in the context of Pakistan by offering a systematic analysis of its trade and production patterns. Using bilateral trade statistics from 1975-2003, we test the hypotheses that Pakistan's net exports of pollutionintensive products have increased to the OECD countries. We also investigate if the stringency of environmental governance in the importing countries plays a role in determining Pakistan's exports of pollution-intensive products. The results reveal that there has been a change in the composition of output and exports towards pollutionintensive manufacturing that parallels the opening of the economy. Overall, the findings appear to be in favour of the pollution haven hypothesis and call for effective environmental policy response for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Asia

2845. Economic Development Strategy, Openness and Rural Poverty: A Framework and China's Experiences

Author:
Justin Yifu Lin and Peilin Liu
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper argues that both openness and poverty in a country are endogenously determined by the country's long-term economic development strategy. Development strategies can be broadly divided into two mutually exclusive groups: (i) the comparative advantage-defying (CAD) strategy, which attempts to encourage firms to deviate from the economy's existing comparative advantages in their entry into an industry or choice of technology; and (ii) the comparative advantage-following (CAF) strategy, which attempts to facilitate the firms' entry into an industry or choice of technology according to the economy's existing comparative advantages.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2846. Globalization and the Urban Poor in China

Author:
Guanghua Wan and Yin Zhang
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper examines the distributional impact of globalization on the poor in urban China. Employing the kernel density estimation technique, we recovered from irregularly grouped household survey data the income distribution for 29 Chinese provinces for 1988-2001. Panels of the income shares of the poorest 20, 10 and 5 per cent of the urban residents were then compiled. In a fixed-effect model, two of the central conclusions of Dollar and Kraay (2002)—that 'the incomes of the poor rise equi-proportionately with average income' and that trade openness has little distributional effect on poverty—were revisited. Our results lend little support to either of the Dollar-Kraay conclusions, but instead indicate that average income growth is associated with worsening income distribution while globalization in general, and trade openness in particular, raises the income shares of the poor. It is also found that openness to trade and openness to FDI have differential distributional effects. The beneficial effect of trade was not restricted to the coastal provinces only, but also weakened significantly after 1992. These findings are robust to allow for nonlinearity in the effect of globalization and to control for the influence of several other variables.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2847. Globalization, Growth and Poverty in India

Author:
Arup Mirtra and N.R. Bhanumurthy
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In this paper an attempt is made to assess the impact of economic reforms on the incidence of poverty by decomposing the change in poverty ratio between two time points into growth/mean effect, inequality effect and the population shift effect. Based on the National Sample Survey data an analysis has been carried out for two time periods: (i) 1983 to 1993-94 and (ii) 1993-94 to 1999-2000, broadly representing the pre-reform and reform-period respectively, for the rural and urban areas of the fifteen major states, and also for the all-India level. The growth/mean effect, which determines the extent of fall (rise) in poverty incidence due to rise (fall) in mean per capita consumption expenditure, dominates in both the periods over the inequality effect, that estimates the rise (fall) in poverty due to rise (fall) in inequality. It also dominates over the population shift effect, which assesses the net impact on all-areas combined poverty, of a decline (rise) in rural (urban) poverty caused possibly by rural-urban migration. The growth effect, which is beneficial for poverty reduction, seems to have gone up in the reform period. The adverse inequality effect also fell in magnitude in the second period compared to the first. States with a greater beneficial growth effect in the second period relative to the first, also show a fall in the magnitude of an adverse population shift effect in the urban areas, i.e., a relatively less rise in the incidence of urban poverty caused by rural-urban migration.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
India and Asia

2848. Vulnerability to Globalization in India: Relative Rankings of States Using Fuzzy Models

Author:
Brinda Viswanathan and S. Kavi Kumar
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The net impact of globalization on developing countries, and more specifically on the poorer sections of population in these countries, is complex and context dependent, and hence needs to be analysed empirically. This study in the context of globalization attempts to develop regional level indices of vulnerability with respect to welfare loss in India using a methodology based on fuzzy inference systems. The vulnerability of an entity is conceptualized (following the practice in global climate change literature) as a function of its exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Empirical analysis based on such multidimensional conceptualization demands use of indicator-based approach which is attempted in this study and uses fuzzy models that adequately capture vagueness inherent in such approaches.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Globalization
Political Geography:
India and Asia

2849. The Burden of Government Debt in the Indian States: Implications for the MDG Poverty Target

Author:
Indranil Dutta
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In this paper we explore what impact, if any, government debts have on achieving the Millennium Development Goals for the Indian states. To fulfill the goals, national governments, especially in the developing world, have to undertake major investments in the social sector; but how much they will really be able to do so will depend on the conditions of their finances. For the Indian states we find that government investment in the social sector is extremely important to reduce poverty, but the government's debt burden is actually stopping several states from attaining the MDG targets. Although, in the medium term the impact of the debt on poverty is not very harmful, in the longer run it has a significant negative impact. Therefore for policy purposes reduction in debt should be given a priority.
Topic:
Debt, Government, and Poverty
Political Geography:
India and Asia

2850. Three Decades of Rural Development Projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa: Learning From Successes and Failures

Author:
Annelies Zoomers
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This article aims to contribute to the discussion about how to make development interventions more effective by analyzing the factors contributing to the success or failure of rural development projects. We made an aggregate level analysis of 46 projects in the field of agricultural research (AR), water management (WM), natural resource management (NRM), and integrated rural development (IRD), financed by the Netherlands' Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) and carried out between 1975-2005 in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Making a distinction between the successful projects and failures, we showed the possibilities and limitations of evaluating projects on the basis of the official criteria (relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and impact and/or using criteria such as poverty, gender, institutional development, governance and environment). We learned that project performance very much depends on whether interventions 'keep track' with local priorities and trends. This is much more important than 'measuring output' (are results in line with the project goal?) which is wrongly presented as a priority in monitoring and evaluation practices.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Africa, Asia, and Central America