World Institute for Development Economics Research

About: World Institute for Development Economics Research is a facility organization based out in Helsinki, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Poverty & Population. The organization has 110 authors who have published 525 publications receiving 17316 citations.

Social Protection in Sub-Saharan Africa: Will the green shoots blossom?

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the recent extension of social protection in sub-Saharan Africa. It identifies two main ‘models’ of social protection in the region: the Southern Africa and Middle Africa models. It then assesses the contrasting policy processes behind these models and examines the major challenges they face as regards financing, institutional capacity and political support. It concludes that, for an effective institutional framework for social protection to evolve in sub-Saharan African countries, the present focus on the technical design of social protection programmes needs to be accompanied by analyses that contribute to also ‘getting the politics right’

Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators: A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty

Abstract: We develop an ordinal method for making welfare comparisons between populations with multidimensional discrete well-being indicators observed at the micro level. The approach assumes that, for each well-being indicator, the levels can be ranked from worse to better; however, no assumptions are made about relative importance of any dimension nor about complementarity/substitutability relationships between dimensions. The method is based on the concept of multidimensional first order dominance. We introduce a rapid and reliable algorithm for empirically determining whether one population dominates another on the basis of available binary indicators by drawing upon linear programming theory. These approaches are applied to household survey data from Vietnam and Mozambique with a focus on child poverty comparisons over time and between regions.

Pawns and Queens Revisited: Public Provision of Private Goods when Individuals make Mistakes

Abstract: This paper analyses the optimal tax policy and public provision of private goods when individuals differ in two respects: income-earning ability and rationality. Publicly provided goods should be overprovided or subsidised, relative to the decentralised optimum, if society's marginal valuation of them exceeds the individual valuation and if these goods help relax the self-selection constraints, formulated in a new way. Optimal marginal income tax rates are shown to differ from the standard rules if publicly provided goods and labour supply are related.