The Digital Revolution and Targeting Public Expenditure for Poverty Reduction

Ravi Kanbur

No 12089, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The Digital Revolution is often argued as providing solutions to the problems of targeting of public expenditure for poverty reduction. This paper revisits the fundamentals of the theory of targeting to pinpoint the possible impacts of the digital revolution on the three dimensions of fine targeting highlighted there—information costs, high implicit marginal tax rates, and political economy. It is argued that while the digital revolution may reduce information costs, although the exact nature of its impact needs to be carefully considered, it does not necessarily address all issues and indeed in some situations may worsen the tradeoffs. Thus the object of this paper is to sound a note of caution. The hype around the digital revolution needs to be duly mitigated by the lessons of the conventional literature on targeting of anti-poverty transfers.

Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12089 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
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:cpr:ceprdp:12089

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12089

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().