Using the Agricultural Census 2003 and the Rice Household Survey 2008 for Indonesia, this paper analyzes the distribution of benefits from fertilizer subsidies and their impact on rice production. The findings suggest that most farmers benefit from fertilizer subsidies; however, the 40 percent largest farmers capture up to 60 percent of the subsidy. The regressive nature of the fertilizer subsidies is in line with research carried out in other countries, the result of larger farms using a larger volume of fertilizer. This paper confirms that fertilizer used in adequate quantities has a positive and significant impact on rice yields, but it also provides evidence that over-using fertilizer has an adverse impact on yields (an inverted U-curve relationship).

Measuring the poverty and distributional impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not easy, given the multiple channels of impact and the limited availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approaches are of limited use in addressing questions like who are being affected by the crisis and by how much, and who are vulnerable to falling into poverty if the crisis deepens? This paper develops a simple micro-simulation method, modifying models from existing economic literature, to measure the poverty and distributional impact of macroeconomic shocks by linking macro projections with pre-crisis household data. The approach is then applied to Bangladesh to assess the potential impact of the slowdown on poverty and income distribution across different groups and regions. A validation exercise using past data from Bangladesh finds that the model generates projections that compare well with actual estimates from household data. The results can inform the design of crisis monitoring tools and policies in Bangladesh...

Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries (called Annex I countries) have to reduce their combined emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels in the first commitment period of 2008-12. Efforts to reduce emissions to meet Kyoto targets and beyond have raised issues of competitiveness in countries that are implementing these policies, as well as fear of leakage of carbon-intensive industries to non-implementing countries. This has also led to proposals for tariff or border tax adjustments to offset any adverse impact of capping carbon dioxide emissions. This paper examines the implications of climate change policies such as carbon tax and energy efficiency standards on competitiveness across industries, as well as issues related to leakage, if any, of carbon-intensive industries to developing countries. Although competitiveness issues have been much debated in the context of carbon taxation policies, the study finds no evidence that the energy intensive industries competitiveness is affected by carbon taxes. In fact...

This paper aims to estimate the global aggregate of disaster impacts during 1960 to 2007 using Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) methodology. The authors selected 184 major disasters in terms of the size of economic damages, based on the data available from the International Emergency Disasters and MunichRe (NatCat) databases for natural catastrophes. They estimate the losses and total impacts including the higher-order effects of these disasters using social accounting matrices constructed for this study. Although the aggregate damages based on the data amount to US$742 billion, the aggregate losses and total impacts are estimated at US$360 billion and US$678 billion, respectively. The results show a growing trend of economic impacts over time in absolute value. However, once the data and estimates are normalized using global gross domestic product, the historical trend of total impacts becomes statistically insignificant. The visual observation confirms the inverted U curve distribution between total impact and income level...

TRIST is a simple, easy to use tool to assess the adjustment implications of trade reform. It improves on existing tools. First, it is an improvement in terms of accuracy because projections are based on revenues actually collected at the tariff line level rather than simply applying statutory rates. Second, it is transparent and open; runs in Excel, with formulas and calculation steps visible to the user; and is open-source and users are free to change, extend, or improve according to their needs. Third, TRIST has greater policy relevance because it projects the impact of tariff reform on total fiscal revenue (including VAT and excise) and results are broken down to the product level so that sensitive products or sectors can be identified. And fourth, the tool is flexible and can incorporate tariff liberalization scenarios involving any group of trading partners and any schedules of products. This paper describes the TRIST tool and provides a range of examples that demonstrate the insights that the tool can provide to policy makers on the adjustment impacts of reducing tariffs.

This paper presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long run for health and education outcomes, in a region of Northwestern Tanzania. The paper studies a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991-94, who were traced and re-interviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19 percent, lost one or more parents before the age of 15 in this period, allowing the authors to assess the permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. The analysis controls for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. The findings show that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5 percent compared with similar children whose mother survived till at least their 15th birthday.

As crude oil prices reach new highs, there is renewed concern about how external shocks will affect growth and poverty in developing countries. This paper describes a macro-micro framework for examining the structural and distributional consequences of a significant external shock-an increase in the world price of oil-on the South African economy. The authors merge results from a highly disaggregative computable general equilibrium model and a micro-simulation analysis of earnings and occupational choice based on socio-demographic characteristics of the household. The model provides changes in employment, wages, and prices that are used in the micro-simulation. The analysis finds that a 125 percent increase in the price of crude oil and refined petroleum reduces employment and GDP by approximately 2 percent, and reduces household consumption by approximately 7 percent. The oil price shock tends to increase the disparity between rich and poor. The adverse impact of the oil price shock is felt by the poorer segment of the formal labor market in the form of declining wages and increased unemployment. Unemployment hits mostly low and medium-skilled workers in the services sector. High-skilled households...

Indonesia experienced rapid growth and the expansion of the formal financial sector during the last quarter of the 20th century. Although this tendency was reversed by the shock of the financial crisis that spread throughout Asia in 1997 and 1998, macroeconomic stability has since then been restored, and poverty has been reduced to pre-crisis levels. Poverty reduction remains nevertheless a critical challenge for Indonesia with over 110 million people (53 percent of the population) living on less than $2 a day. The objective of this study is to help identify ways in which the Doha Development Agenda might contribute to further poverty reduction in Indonesia. To provide a good technical basis for answering this question, the authors use an approach that combines a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a microsimulation model. This framework is designed to capture important channels through which macroeconomic shocks affect household incomes. It allows making recommendations on specific trade reform options as well as on complementary development policy reforms. The framework presented in this study generates detailed poverty outcomes of trade shocks. Given the magnitude of the shocks examined here and the structural features of the Indonesian economy...

Developing countries face a host of macroeconomic challenges in the design and implementation of development strategies and policies. The importance of the underlying poverty and distributional issues creates a need for relevant and reliable ways of tracking the social impact of shocks and policies. This paper describes and demonstrates the use of a stylized framework for simulating the poverty implications of the Dutch disease, a change in the terms of trade and budgetary policy. The basic approach is to embed a Lorenz model of the size distribution of economic welfare in a general equilibrium model of an open economy. It is observed that, while aggregate welfare and poverty effects may be negligible, the structural and distributional impacts tend to be significant. The latter drive the political economy of policymaking and point to the need for an analytical framework that accounts for both the structural richness of the economy and the heterogeneity of the stakeholders

For the urban poor in developing countries, informal waste recycling is a common way to earn income. There are few reliable estimates of the number of people engaged in waste picking or of its economic and environmental impact. Yet studies suggest that when organized and supported, waste picking can spur grassroots investment by poor people, create jobs, reduce poverty, save municipalities money, improve industrial competitiveness, conserve natural resources, and protect the environment. Three models have been used to organize waste pickers: micro enterprises, cooperatives, and public-private partnerships. These can lead to more efficient recycling and more effective poverty reduction.

In the context of the Pakistan Clean Fuels Program, and subsequent workshops, the study reviews the proposed timetable for phasing lead out of gasoline, increasing the average of gasoline octane, and reducing sulfur in diesel, and fuel oil. Within South Asia, Pakistan remains one of the countries using leaded gasoline widely, and, given the extensive epidemiological evidence concerning the adverse impact of lead on public health, lead elimination is the highest priority for fuel quality improvement, in addition to the pollutant concern of high ambient concentrations of fine particles. Also examined is the aspect of particulate emissions: higher contribution by diesel vehicles to particulate emissions, a factor aggravated by the much lower pricing policy of diesel. Workshops findings suggest that incremental costs of reducing sulfur in diesel is low, compared to the cost of reducing sulfur in fuel oil which is substantial, arguing for an accelerated switch from fuel oil to natural gas. Conversely, the incremental cost of eliminating lead in gasoline...

Using household survey data for 1998, the authors assess the distributional impact of the recent economic crisis in the Philippines. The results suggest that the impact of the crisis was modest, leading to a five percent reduction in average living standards, and a nine percent increase in the incidence of poverty - with larger increases indicated for the depth, and severity of poverty. The greater shock came from El Nino, rather than through the labor market. The labor market shock was progressive (reducing inequality) while El Nino shock was regressive (increasing inequality). Not all households were equally vulnerable to the crisis-induced shocks. Household and community characteristics affected the impact of the shocks. Ownership of land, made households more susceptible to the El Nino shocks, higher levels of education made households more vulnerable to wage, and employment shocks. The impact of the crisis was greater in more commercially developed communities. Occupational diversity within a household helped mitigate the adverse impact. There is some evidence of consumption smoothing by the households affected by the crisis, but the poor were less able to protect their consumption, which is a matter of policy concern.

A year after the onset of Ebola, the estimated GDP losses for the three countries through 2015 total US$2.2 billion (US$240 million for Liberia, US$535 million for Guinea and US$1.4 billion for Sierra Leone). This is the result of the severe impact of the epidemic which has been exacerbated by the large decline in the world price of iron ore and severe corporate governance issues in mining in Sierra Leone. Important differences among the three countries are emerging. Liberia is gradually returning to normalcy, Guineas economy is stagnating, and Sierra Leone is suffering a severe recession. This update presents the World Banks most recent analysis of the economic and fiscal effects of the Ebola epidemic on the three countries. In relation to our January 2015 report it contains: 1) an updated status for the economies of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone; and 2) a brief description of these countries Economic Recovery Plans with indicative estimates of their potential impact on growth. As of April 2015, the Ebola epidemic has been largely contained but the negative effects on the economies of Liberia...

A national sample of attorneys (N = 134) was surveyed to investigate how characteristics of a rejected applicant’s claim would affect subsequent claimant outcomes and appraisals. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) merit determinations positively influenced attorney representation decisions and confidence in favorable claimant outcomes. Attorneys found rejected applicant claims more credible when the claimant perceived the selection procedure to be unrelated to the target position and when the applicant was a racial minority. Attorney course of legal action was dependent on the interaction of both EEOC decision and applicant perceptions of job relatedness, such that more claimant supportive actions were observed when the EEOC found merit and the applicant perceived the selection procedures to be job unrelated. The impact of organizational efforts in validation, scoring procedures, and adverse impact reduction were explored in regard to settlement and litigation outcomes. Exploratory analyses identified best practices in regard to these issues.

The current study examines the behaviors of four adverse impact measurements: the 4/5ths rule, two tests of significance (ZD and ZIR), and a newly developed AI measurement (Lnadj). Upon the suggestion of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program Manual about the sensitivity of the assessment of AI when the sample size is very large (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, 2002), Lnadj is a new statistic that has been developed and proposed as an alternative practical significance test to the 4/5ths rule. The results indicated that, unlike the 4/5ths rule and other tests for adverse impact, Lnadj is an index of practical significance that is less sensitive to differences across selection conditions that are not supposed to affect tests of adverse impact. Furthermore, Lnadj decreases Type I error rates when there is a small d value and Type II error rates when there is moderate to large d value.

This study analyzes the fiscal, efficiency, social, and environmental impact of power sector reforms in seven countries in the ECA region. It finds sector deficits have been falling over the last decade and that the savings from lower sector deficits did not translate into higher social spending. More emphasis must be placed on monitoring deficits and tailoring policy reform to country specific circumstances. The impact of reform on utility efficiency, as measured by the cost of generation, system loss collections, and operational efficiency, is ambiguous. While overall revenue per kilowatt hour increased in almost all countries, problems continue with losses, collection rates, and staffing. In terms of social impacts, electricity spending as a share of income increased, especially for the poor, while consumption stayed the same. In terms of environmental impacts, reforms did slightly improve energy efficiency in power plants though this has little direct impact on human health because the electricity sector's share of the total health damage from air pollution is negligible. Several lessons emerge from the analysis. Undertaking simple ex ante simulations of reform impacts will allow better identification of potential reform benefits and costs. Placing more emphasis on outcome-based indicators of service quality would help ensure that future operations produce the intended end-user benefits. In many cases...

Long cargo dwell times in ports are a critical issue in Sub-Saharan African countries since they result in slow import processes and are bound to dramatically reduce trade. The main objective of this study is to analyze long dwell times' causes in ports in Sub-Saharan Africa from a shipper's perspective. The findings point to the crucial importance of private sector practices and incentives. The authors argue in the case of Sub-Saharan African countries that private operators, rather than being advocates of reforms in this area, might be responsible for the failures of many of these initiatives. It seems that in Sub-Saharan Africa importers' and freight forwarders' professionalism, cash constraints and operators' strategies are some of the factors that have a major impact on cargo dwell time. Low competency, cash constraints and low storage tariffs explain why most importers have little incentive to reduce cargo dwell time since in most cases, this would increase their input costs. However, monopolists/cartels may have a stronger incentive to reduce cargo dwell time but only in order to maximize their profit (and would not adjust prices downward).

The Government of the Republic of Belarus (GoB) plans to increase district heating (DH) tariffs to cost-recovery levels and gradually phase out subsidies, replacing them with social assistance programs. Residential DH tariffs in Belarus are currently at roughly 10-21 percent of cost-recovery levels. DH subsidies are highly regressive, add costs to business, and create significant fiscal risks and macroeconomic vulnerabilities. The purpose of this report is to analyze the social, sectoral, and fiscal impacts of the proposed tariff reform, and to identify and recommend measures to mitigate adverse impacts of DH tariff increases on the households. The analysis shows that: 1) the burden of higher DH tariffs will fall most heavily on low-income groups; 2) the current system of subsidies is unfair, benefitting wealthy customers more than the poor; 3) cross-subsidies undermine the competitiveness of industries in Belarus; and underpriced residential heat places an increasing fiscal burden on the GoB and risks macroeconomic instability. The analysis shows that a negative social impact is manageable if a tariff increase is accompanied by countervailing measures to compensate for the loss of purchasing power...

The increase in food prices represents a major crisis for the world's poor. This paper aims to review the evidence on the potential impact of higher food prices on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines the extent to which policy responses will benefit the poor. The paper shows that rising food prices are likely to lead to higher poverty in sub-Saharan Africa as the negative impact on net poor consumers outweighs the benefits to poor producers. A recent survey shows that the most common policy response in sub-Saharan African countries is reducing taxes on food while outside the region price controls or targeted consumer subsidies are the most popular measure. Sub-Saharan African countries also have a higher prevalence of food-based safety net programs which are being scaled up to respond to rising prices. The review suggests that the benefits from reducing import tariffs on staples may accrue largely to the non-poor. Social protection programs show more promise, but geographic targeting is likely to be crucial in ensuring that benefits reach the neediest. The paper also argues that anti-poverty interventions ought to retain their focus on rural areas where poverty remains highest even after taking into account the adverse impact on the urban poor due to the rise in food prices.

Selection from diverse groups of applicants poses the formidable challenge of developing valid selection procedures that simultaneously add value, do not discriminate unfairly and which minimise adverse impact. Valid selection procedures used in a fair, non-discriminatory manner that optimises utility, however, very often result in adverse impact against members of protected groups. More often than not, the assessment techniques used for selection are blamed for this. The conventional interpretation of adverse impact results in an erroneous diagnosis of the fundamental causes of the under-representation of protected group members and, consequently, in an inappropriate treatment of the problem.