What is the welfare effect of a price change? This simple question is one of the most relevant and controversial questions in microeconomic theory and one of the main sources of errors in empirical economics. This book returns to this question with the objective of providing a general framework...

The paper uses Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and related indexes to determine the optimal targeting strategy of a food voucher program for refugees. Estimations focus on the 2014 food voucher administered by the World Food Program to Syrian refugees in Jordan using data...

This study exploits unprecedented access to income data and a combination of newly developed statistical methods to evaluate income inequality in Egypt and test for potential top incomes biases. Income inequality in Egypt is found to be low by regional and world standards; top incomes are found...

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the...

“Growth is good for the poor” is a ubiquitous statement and one generally backed by theory, research and history. In the long-run, growth reduces poverty. Yet, growth in output - per se - is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poverty reduction in the short-term. The paper...

The paper defines the Gini index as the sum of individual contributions where individual contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of each individual from all other members of society. Among various possible forms of individual contributions to the Gini found in the literature, we...

The cost of the subsidy system in Morocco peaked at 6.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012, an amount larger than the country’s total investment budget for that year. Direct subsidies to households in 2013 (October 2013 prices) are estimated at DH34.4 billion (US$4.1 billion, or...

The Middle East and North Africa region is known for having low female labor market participation rates as compared with its level of economic development. A possible explanation is that these countries find themselves at the turning point of the U-shape hypothesis when countries transition from...

The measurement of multidimensional poverty has been advocated by most welfare scholars and is experiencing a growth in interest, partly explained by controversial debates that have emerged across academics and practitioners. This paper follows one of the least explored approaches -- Multiple...

The paper shows how Labor Force Surveys can be used effectively to estimate poverty rates using Household Expenditure Surveys and cross-survey imputation methods. With only two rounds of Household Expenditure Survey data for Morocco (2001 and 2007), the paper estimates quarterly poverty rates...