This paper reviews the literature on the performance of commonly found socialsafety net programs in developing countries. The evidence suggests that universal foodsubsidies have very limited potential for redistributing income. While targeted foodsubsidies have greater potential, this can only...

We set out a general equilibrium model for the evaluation of a domesticallyfinanced transfer program, which helps to combine the results from a computable generalequilibrium model with disaggregated household data. We separate the indirect welfareimpact into three components: (1) the...

The worsening degradation of natural resources urgently requires the adoption ofmore sustainable management practices. This need has led to growing interest andinvestment in monitoring systems for tracking the condition of natural resources.Although grounded in concepts of sustainability, the...

The calorie-income demand elasticity is an important parameter in thedevelopment literature and in the policy arena. Yet, there is very little evidence on theextent to which it can be considered as an unchanging parameter or a time-shiftingparameter that, for example, changes with the economic...

This paper synthesizes the results of five studies using household panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico and Russia, which examine the extent to which households are able through formal and/or informal arrangements to insure their consumption from specific economic shocks and...