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Macroeconomic adjustment and the poor: analytical issues and cross-country evidence

Pierre-Richard Agénor

No 2788, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. First, he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world. Second, he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor. Third, the author emphasizes the role of the labor market. He develops an analytical framework that captures some of the main features of the urban labor market in developing countries and studies the effects of fiscal adjustment on wages, employment, and poverty. Fourth, he presents cross-country regressions linking various macroeconomic and structural variables to poverty. The author finds that output growth and real exchange rate depreciations tend to lower poverty, while illiteracy, income inequality, and macroeconomic volatility tend to increase poverty. In addition, the impact of growth on poverty appears to be asymmetric, and to result from a significant relationship between episodes of increasing poverty and negative growth rates.

Keywords: Labor Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Services&Transfers to Poor; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Conditions and Volatility; Environmental Economics&Policies; Achieving Shared Growth; Economic Theory&Research; Inequality; Poverty Assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-02-28
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Journal Article: Macroeconomic Adjustment and the Poor: Analytical Issues and Cross‐Country Evidence (2004) Downloads
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