The paper studies how high household leverage and crises can arise as a result of changes in the income distribution. Empirically, the periods 1920-1929 and 1983-2008 both exhibited a large increase in the income share of high-income households, a large increase in debt leverage of the...

This paper estimates the household income growth rates implied by food demand in a sample of urban Chinese households in 1993–2005. Our estimates, based on Engel curves for food consumption, indicate an average per capita income growth of 6.8 percent per year in 1993–2005. This...

This paper uses Engel curves to estimate real income growth in Brazil. The estimated per capita household real income growth in metropolitan areas during 1987-2002 is about 4½ percent per year, well above the "headline" growth of 1½ percent obtained by deflating nominal incomes by the CPI....

Economic policies are often judged by a handful of statistics, some of which may be biased during periods of change. We estimate the income growth implied by the evolution of food demand and durable good ownership in post-reform Brazil and Mexico, and find that changes in consumption patterns...

We argue that the U.S. personal saving rate’s long stability (from the 1960s through the early 1980s), subsequent steady decline (1980s - 2007), and recent substantial increase (2008 - 2011) can all be interpreted using a parsimonious ‘buffer stock’ model of optimal...

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) assesses the main exogenous and endogenous risks affecting the implementation of the strategy, including terms-of-trade shocks and absorptive capacity weaknesses. The medium-term expenditure framework identifies the priorities and needs of the country...

This paper reviews the Latin American experience with the implementation of 1993 SNAand the updating of the national accounts' base year. It also makes a preliminary assessment of the possible estimation biases in nominal GDP estimates stemming from the use of outdated national accounts base...

This Selected Issues paper reviews trends in GDP and their impact on poverty reduction in Ghana. It highlights structural constraints that are believed to have affected output growth, along with potential sources of increases in output in future years. The paper analyzes trends in the main...

An increasing body of evidence suggests that the behavior of the economy has changed in many fundamental ways over the last decades. In particular, greater financial deregulation, larger wealth accumulation, and better policies might have helped lower uncertainty about future income and lengthen...

This paper provides a brief and selective overview of research on the links between macroeconomic policies and poverty reduction. Using the Human Development Index as a measure of well-being, the progress made by 100 countries during 1975–98 is presented, and its association with macroeconomic...