Costing alternative transfer modalities

Amy Margolies and John Hoddinott

Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2015, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Discussions regarding the merits of cash and food transfers focus on their relative impacts. Much less is known about their relative costs. Activity-based costing methods are applied to interventions situated in Ecuador, Niger, Uganda, and Yemen, finding that the per-transfer cost of providing cash is always less than food. Given the budget for these interventions, an additional 44,769 people could have received assistance at no additional cost had cash been provided instead of food. This suggests a significant opportunity cost in terms of reduced coverage when higher cost transfer modalities are used. Decisions to use cash or food transfers should consider both impacts and costs.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19439342.2014.984745 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Costing alternative transfer modalities (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevef:v:7:y:2015:i:1:p:1-16

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJDE20

DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2014.984745

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Effectiveness is currently edited by Howard White

More articles in Journal of Development Effectiveness from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().