This paper offers a new way of assessing government cash transfers using a social welfare function framework. It demonstrates how one can use social welfare functions to measure the efficiency of such program s without requir ing the specif ication of a poverty line or particular poverty...

This paper is a summary of the behaviour of food commodity prices in 2007-8 and a review of the causes of the price increases. The historical background shows that the price spike was much less severe than in the 1970s. The conventional wisdom that prices of the main food commodities were...

This study introduces a new asset pricing factor to capture both the effects of concentrated ownership and institutional development of in 61 international equity markets. The evidence suggests the new measure offers significant improvements over the size and book-to-market value three factor...

Humans remain exposed to ongoing security risks. Energy security is closely associated with human life and productive activity and is strongly related to the increasing number of natural extreme events over the past few decades. Therefore, finding the exact relationship between two factors will...