IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/adb/adbwps/259.html

Working Paper 122 - Welfare Analysis Using Data from the International Comparison Program for Africa

Author

Abstract

This paper uses data from the International Comparison Program 2005 to recover income and price elasticity estimates for the African continent using the Extended Linear Expenditure System for 13 broadly defined commodities. The results can be used for aggregate welfare comparison in such global models as GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) and exercises to infer welfare impact of relative price shocks at the continental level. In a heuristic way also, it is possible to derive a “utility-consistent” global poverty line from the demand function that could be compared with the popular international poverty lines. Results generally indicate that changes in the price of food items could lead to greater welfare loss compared to changes in the price of energy or other commodities. Income elasticity estimates generally fell within bounds usually found from household surveys. At the continental level, the estimated utility-consistent subsistence expenditure is close to 1.12 dollar a day per person, which is quite close to the 1.08 dollar a day global (international) poverty line used in 2005 to measure absolute poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Shimeles Abebe, 2010. "Working Paper 122 - Welfare Analysis Using Data from the International Comparison Program for Africa," Working Paper Series 259, African Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:adb:adbwps:259
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Procurement/Project-related-Procurement/WORKING%20122%20word%20document%20BB.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Knowles, Stephen, 2001. "Are the Penn World Tables data on government consumption and investment being misused?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 293-298, May.
    2. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2004. "How Have the World's Poorest Fared since the Early 1980s?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 19(2), pages 141-169.
    3. Dowrick, Steve & Quiggin, John, 1997. "True Measures of GDP and Convergence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 41-64, March.
    4. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2007. "The changing profile of poverty in the world," 2020 vision briefs BB01 Special Edition, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    5. Nuxoll, Daniel A, 1994. "Differences in Relative Prices and International Differences in Growth Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1423-1436, December.
    6. Dowrick, Steve, 2005. "Errors in the Penn World Table demographic data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 243-248, May.
    7. Howe, Howard, 1975. "Development of the extended linear expenditure system from simple saving assumptions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 305-310, July.
    8. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2007. "Absolute poverty measures for the developing world, 1981-2004," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4211, The World Bank.
    9. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    10. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 327-368.
    11. Ferreira, Francisco H.G. & Ravallion, Martin, 2008. "Global poverty and inequality : a review of the evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4623, The World Bank.
    12. Heston, Alan & Summers, Robert, 1996. "International Price and Quantity Comparisons: Potentials and Pitfalls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 20-24, May.
    13. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2010. "The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1577-1625.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, 2000. "International Comparisons of Real Product, 1820-1990: An Alternative Data Set," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 1-41, January.
    2. William Larson & Chris Papageorgiou & Arvind Subramania & Simon Johnson, 2009. "Is Newer Better? Penn World Table Revisions and the Growth Literature," 2009 Meeting Papers 858, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. J. Peter Neary, 2004. "Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1411-1428, December.
    4. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2010. "The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1577-1625.
    5. Martin Ravallion & Shaohua Chen & Prem Sangraula, 2009. "Dollar a Day Revisited," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 23(2), pages 163-184, June.
    6. Johnson, Simon & Larson, William & Papageorgiou, Chris & Subramanian, Arvind, 2013. "Is newer better? Penn World Table Revisions and their impact on growth estimates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 255-274.
    7. Duangkamon Chotikapanich & William Griffiths & Wasana Karunarathne & D.S. Prasada Rao, 2013. "Calculating Poverty Measures from the Generalised Beta Income Distribution," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 89, pages 48-66, June.
    8. Neary, Peter, 2000. "True Multilateral Indexes for International Comparisons of Real Income: Theory and Empirics," CEPR Discussion Papers 2590, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Hanousek, Jan & Hajkova, Dana & Filer, Randall K., 2008. "A rise by any other name? Sensitivity of growth regressions to data source," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1188-1206, September.
    10. Hanousek, Jan & Filer, Randall K. & Hájková, Dana, 2004. "The Other Side of the Moon: The Data Problem in Analysing Growth Determinants," CEPR Discussion Papers 4349, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Vinod Thomas, 2009. "Income Disparity and Growth," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 1(1), pages 63-86, January.
    12. F. Gerard Adams & Byron Gangnes & Yochanan Shachmurove, 2006. "Why is China so Competitive? Measuring and Explaining China's Competitiveness," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 95-122, February.
    13. Mussa, Richard, 2017. "Poverty in Malawi: Policy Analysis with Distributional Changes," MPRA Paper 75980, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Margarida Duarte & Diego Restuccia, 2020. "Relative Prices and Sectoral Productivity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1400-1443.
    15. Butkiewicz, James L. & Yanikkaya, Halit, 2005. "The Effects of IMF and World Bank Lending on Long-Run Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 371-391, March.
    16. Simon, András & Darvas, Zsolt, 1999. "Tőkeállomány, megtakarítás és gazdasági növekedés [Capital stock, savings and economic growth]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 749-771.
    17. Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2014. "Africa is on time," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 311-338, September.
    18. Kerekes, Monika, 2007. "Analyzing patterns of economic growth: a production frontier approach," Discussion Papers 2007/15, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    19. Alkire, Sabina & Santos, Maria Emma, 2014. "Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 251-274.
    20. Yin‐Wong Cheung & Eiji Fujii, 2014. "Exchange Rate Misalignment Estimates—Sources Of Differences," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 91-121, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:adb:adbwps:259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adeleke Oluwole Salami (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afdbgci.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.