We draw some lessons from the Tunisian experience of social reforms and associated civil conflict. Our main interest is the riots that occurred after subsidy cuts and their possible substitution of price subsidies by direct cash transfers. We propose new welfare indicators apt to assess policy...

The aim of this article is to analyse in depth the interactions of growth and poverty in Syria, which undertook reforms to reduce the government's involvement in the economy. During the 1996–2004 period, growth was pro-poor in ‘weak absolute’ terms but not in either relative or ‘strong...

This paper introduces a new methodology to target direct transfers against poverty. Our method is based on estimation methods that focus on the poor. Using data from Tunisia, we estimate ‘focused’ transfer schemes that highly improve anti-poverty targeting performances. Post-transfer poverty...

Previous poverty assessments for Burkina Faso were biased due to the neglect of some important methodological issues. This led to the so-called ‘Burkinabè Growth-Poverty-Paradox’, i.e. relatively sustained macro-economic growth, but almost constant poverty. We estimate that poverty...